The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean—so Bunbury died.