An Ideal Husband

by Oscar Wilde

Oh, I love London Society! I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.

I don’t know that women are always rewarded for being charming.

the strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

What sort of a woman is she? LORD GORING. Oh! a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night! MABEL CHILTERN. I dislike her already.

I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.

I am so glad to hear you say that. Marchmont and I have been married for seven years, and he has never once told me that I was morbid. Men are so painfully unobservant!

I hope you have not invested in it. I am sure you are far too clever to have done that. MRS. CHEVELEY. I have invested very largely in it.

I see the people coming up from supper, and English men always get romantic after a meal, and that bores me dreadfully.

My father tells me that even I have faults. Perhaps I have. I don’t know.

Oh, I should fancy Mrs. Cheveley is one of those very modern women of our time who find a new scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the Park every afternoon at five-thirty.

Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing. Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing.

I wish, Gertrude, you would speak to him, and tell him that once a week is quite often enough to propose to any one, and that it should always be done in a manner that attracts some attention.

The higher education of men is what I should like to see. Men need it so sadly.

Shall I see you at Lady Bonar’s tonight? She has discovered a wonderful new genius. He does ... nothing at all, I believe. That is a great comfort, is it not?

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike. You dislike me. I am quite aware of that. And I have always detested you. And yet I have come here to do you a service.

You see, Phipps, Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

Well, the fact is, father, this is not my day for talking seriously. I am very sorry, but it is not my day. LORD CAVERSHAM. What do you mean, sir? LORD GORING. During the Season, father, I only talk seriously on the first Tuesday in every month, from four to seven. LORD CAVERSHAM. Well, make it Tuesday, sir, make it Tuesday.

But it is after seven, father, and my doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven. It makes me talk in my sleep.

I quite agree with you, father. If there was less sympathy in the world there would be less trouble in the world. LORD CAVERSHAM [going towards the smoking-room]. That is a paradox, sir. I hate paradoxes.

Do you always really understand what you say, sir? LORD GORING [after some hesitation]. Yes, father, if I listen attentively.

No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex. LORD GORING. Quite so. And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father? LORD CAVERSHAM. I use it, sir. I use nothing else. LORD GORING. So my mother tells me.

Oh! spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead. LORD GORING. And thunderingly well they do it.

I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some good advice. MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh! pray don’t. One should never give a woman anything that she can’t wear in the evening.

Too much experience is a dangerous thing. Pray have a cigarette. Half the pretty women in London smoke cigarettes. Personally I prefer the other half.

With you? No. Your transaction with Robert Chiltern may pass as a loathsome commercial transaction of a loathsome commercial age; but you seem to have forgotten that you came here tonight to talk of love, you whose lips desecrated the word love, you to whom the thing is a book closely sealed, went this afternoon to the house of one of the most noble and gentle women in the world to degrade her husband in her eyes, to try and kill her love for him, to put poison in her heart, and bitterness in her life, to break her idol, and, it may be, spoil her soul. That I cannot forgive you. That was horrible. For that there can be no forgiveness.

The drawback of stealing a thing, Mrs. Cheveley, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is. You can’t get that bracelet off, unless you know where the spring is. And I see you don’t know where the spring is. It is rather difficult to find.

It is a great nuisance. I can’t find anyone in this house to talk to. And I am full of interesting information. I feel like the latest edition of something or other.

The second today? What conceited ass has been impertinent enough to dare to propose to you before I had proposed to you?

And I’m ... I’m a little over thirty. MABEL CHILTERN. Dear, you look weeks younger than that.