The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people.

More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn’t a dentist.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don’t try it. You should leave that to people who haven’t been at a University.

a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

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

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain.