The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

Lady Bracknell?

I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.

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

Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.

I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I’ll certainly try to forget the fact.

[Takes one and eats it.]

Do you mean to say you have had my cigarette case all this time? I wish to goodness you had let me know. I have been writing frantic letters to Scotland Yard about it. I was very nearly offering a large reward.

It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case.

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

You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn’t Ernest.

Now produce your explanation, and pray make it improbable.

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

To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one’s own relations.

You don’t seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

Your uncle would have to dine upstairs. Fortunately he is accustomed to that.

Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.

I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me.

I’m sure the programme will be delightful, after a few expurgations.

Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about.

When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact.

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.

Do you smoke? Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.

I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know? Jack. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it.

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

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

I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.

My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

You don’t think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy? Algernon. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.

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.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

If I didn’t write them down, I should probably forget all about them.

Miss Prism. Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us. Cecily. Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn’t possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.

I hope it did not end happily? I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

Cecily. If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy. Algernon. [Looks at her in amazement.] Oh! Of course I have been rather reckless.

Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life,

the Society for the Prevention of Discontent among the Upper Orders.

I would merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief. What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

After we had all been resigned to his loss, his sudden return seems to me peculiarly distressing.

Algernon. I am afraid I can’t stay more than a week this time.

You are certainly not staying with me for a whole week as a guest or anything else. You have got to leave . . . by the four-five train.

Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your presence in my garden utterly absurd.

The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity.

Cecily. On the 14th of February last. Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here. The next day I bought this little ring in your name, and this is the little bangle with the true lovers’ knot I promised you always to wear.

Cecily. Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.

University Extension Scheme on the Influence of a permanent income on Thought.

To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?

Ahem! Mr. Worthing, after careful consideration I have decided entirely to overlook my nephew’s conduct to you.