The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays Quotes

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.

Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest: And Other Plays

“Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?

Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“I have come up to town expressly to propose to her.
Algernon. I thought you had come up for pleasure? . . . I call that business.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“The only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us...it is outside the proper sphere of art.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.

Lane. [Gravely.] There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice.

Algernon. No cucumbers!

Lane. No, sir. Not even for ready money.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“JACK: Apoplexy will do perfectly well, Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite suddenly, don't they?
ALGERNON: Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow. It's a sort of thing that runs in families.
JACK: Good heavens! Then I certainly won't choose that. What can I say?
ALGERNON: Oh! Say influenza.
JACK Oh, no! that wouldn't sound probable at all. Far too many people have had it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“I don't play accurately-any one can play accurately- but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“ALGERNON:
I suspected that, my dear fellow! I have Bunburyed all over Shropshire on two separate occasions. Now, go on. Why are you Ernest in town and Jack in the country?

JACK:
My dear Algy, I don’t know whether you will be able to understand my real motives. You are hardly serious enough. When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. It’s one’s duty to do so. And as a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness, in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes. That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.

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

JACK:
That wouldn’t be at all a bad thing.

ALGERNON:
Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don’t try it. You should leave that to people who haven’t been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers. What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.

JACK:
What on earth do you mean?

ALGERNON:
You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. 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. Bunbury is perfectly invaluable. If it wasn’t for Bunbury’s extraordinary bad health, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to dine with you at Willis’s to-night, for I have been really engaged to Aunt Augusta for more than a week.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays