A Woman of No Importance

by Oscar Wilde

HESTER. [Smiling.] We have the largest country in the world, Lady Caroline. They used to tell us at school that some of our states are as big as France and England put together. LADY CAROLINE. Ah! you must find it very draughty, I should fancy.

He must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the whole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man, nowadays.

day. I was in hopes he would have married lady Kelso. But I believe he said her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forget which.

Lady Belton eloped with Lord Fethersdale. I remember the occurrence perfectly. Poor Lord Belton died three days afterwards of joy, or gout. I forget which.

The one advantage of playing with fire, Lady Caroline, is that one never gets even singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.

LADY STUTFIELD. Ah! The world was made for men and not for women. MRS. ALLONBY. Oh, don't say that, Lady Stutfield. We have a much better time than they have. There are far more things forbidden to us than are forbidden to them.

ILLINGWORTH. It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

he'll be of considerable use to me in something I am foolish enough to think of doing.

These American girls carry off all the good matches.

What are American dry goods?

ILLINGWORTH. American novels.

you don't think that uneducated people should be allowed to have votes? LORD ILLINGWORTH. I think they are the only people who should.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the

uneatable.

She lets her clever tongue run away with her sometimes. LADY CAROLINE. Is that the only thing, Jane, Mrs. Allonby allows to run away with her?

ALLONBY. Twenty years of romance! Is there such a thing?

Twenty years of romance! Is there such a thing?

In a Temple every one should be serious, except the thing that is worshipped. MRS. ALLONBY. And that should be man? LORD ILLINGWORTH. Women kneel so gracefully; men don't.

HESTER. I dislike London dinner-parties. MRS. ALLONBY. I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk. HESTER. I think the stupid people talk a great deal. MRS. ALLONBY. Ah, I never listen!

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. MRS. ALLONBY. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy. LORD ILLINGWORTH. Its comedy also, sometimes.

One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation. MRS. ALLONBY. Have you tried a good reputation? LORD ILLINGWORTH. It is one of the many annoyances to which I have never been subjected.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

The annoying thing is that the wretches can be perfectly happy without us. That is why I think it is every woman's duty never to leave them alone for a single moment, except during this short breathing space after dinner;

I don't think that we should ever be spoken of as other people's property. All men are married women's property. That is the only true definition of what married women's property really is. But we don't belong to any one.

With your views on life I wonder you married at all. MRS. ALLONBY. So do

beforehand he has got no conversation at all. LADY STUTFIELD. I adore silent men. MRS. ALLONBY. Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a MAUVAIS QUART D'HEURE made up of exquisite moments.

"a bad 15 minutes"

Did he become angry with you, and say anything that was unkind or true?

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.

nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare.

More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being?

The Ideal Husband? There couldn't be such a thing. The institution is wrong. LADY STUTFIELD. The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to US.

He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing.

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

in England we have too many artificial social barriers. We don't see as much as we should of the middle and lower classes.

You rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don't know how to live

You have lost life's secret.

It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold.

If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on each, but don't punish the one and let the other go free. Don't have one law for men and another for women.

there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important,

a clergyman who wanted to be a lunatic, or a lunatic who wanted to be a clergyman, I forget which,

LORD ILLINGWORTH. How is the most charming woman in the world? MRS. ALLONBY. [Taking LADY STUTFIELD by the hand.] We are both quite well, thank you, Lord Illingworth.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. MRS. ALLONBY. No man does. That is his.

in

is

When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.

duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it.

A man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.