Importance Of Being Earnest Quotes

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. Can you forgive me?

Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read.

I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

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.

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

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

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.

I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive.

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

Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.

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

What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.

Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice.

LADY BRACKNELL 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?

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist.

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.

A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

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

" "But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!" "I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing." "That may be, but the muffins are the same!

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.

However, I don't mind hard work when there is no definite object of any kind. To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing.