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Why is it that at a bachelor’s establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.
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.
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.
The Divorce Court was specially invented for people whose memories are so curiously constituted.
Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don’t think it right.
Some aunts are tall, some aunts are not tall. That is a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to decide for herself. You seem to think that every aunt should be exactly like your aunt! That is absurd!
There is no objection, I admit, to an aunt being a small aunt, but why an aunt, no matter what her size may be, should call her own nephew her uncle, I can’t quite make out.
Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country, and the cigarette case was given to me in the country.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous.
You don’t seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.
That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.
I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.
You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.
that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound.
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.
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.
Cecily is not a silly romantic girl, I am glad to say. She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and pays no attention at all to her lessons.
It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.
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.
A classical allusion merely, drawn from the Pagan authors.
Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side.
Quixotic
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Cecily. Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare. Algernon. They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.
misanthrope
womanthrope,
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. Miss Prism. That depends on the intellectual sympathies of the woman. Maturity can always be depended on. Ripeness can be trusted. Young women are green. [Dr. Chasuble starts.] I spoke horticulturally.
What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
vanity
It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.
machinations
When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink.
effrontery!
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
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.
heretical
