The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

Algernon. 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.

once a week is quite enough to dine with one’s own relations.

and if you ever get married, which seems to me extremely problematic,

For heaven’s sake, don’t try to be cynical. It’s perfectly easy to be cynical.

but I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I hadn’t been there since her poor husband’s death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger.

Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

satire aside for a sec oscar even ended ED twt 🔥🔥🔥

Jack. [Nervously.] Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl . . . I have ever met since . . . I met you.

need to dumbify a man like this

I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Are your parents living? Jack. I have lost both my parents. Lady Bracknell. To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

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.

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

stone cold

I’ll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister. Algernon. Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.

A misanthrope I can understand—a womanthrope, never!

Chasuble. But is a man not equally attractive when married? Miss Prism. No married man is ever attractive except to his wife. Chasuble. And often, I’ve been told, not even to her.

What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

And this is the box in which I keep all your dear letters. [Kneels at table, opens box, and produces letters tied up with blue ribbon.] Algernon. My letters! But, my own sweet Cecily, I have never written you any letters. Cecily. You need hardly remind me of that, Ernest. I remember only too well that I was forced to write your letters for you. I wrote always three times a week, and sometimes oftener.

It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it hadn’t been broken off at least once.

Outside the family circle, papa, I am glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man.

And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?

sprinkle sprinkle

When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me.

You can’t possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It’s absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.

Cecily. [To Gwendolen.] That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not? Gwendolen. Yes, dear, if you can believe him. Cecily. I don’t. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer. Gwendolen. True. In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.

How absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes! Where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.

They have moments of physical courage of which we women know absolutely nothing.

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.

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.

He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?

I am not punctual myself, I know, but I do like punctuality in others, and waiting, even to be married, is quite out of the question.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

I do not deny that is a serious blow. But after all, who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered? Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Why should there be one law for men, and another for women?

I never change, except in my affections.