The Importance Of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

[Stiffly.] I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o’clock.

Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.

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

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.

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

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.

Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.

I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.

Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

Good heavens! I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden.

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.

Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.