The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde

"For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical."
"My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about."

"He's dead. Quite dead."
"What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it."

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

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

However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

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

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

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

"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?"
"I can. For I feel that you are sure to change."

"Cecily and Gwendolen are perfectly certain to be extremely great friends. I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister."
"Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first."

I hadn't been there since her poor husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger.

There is no use speculating on that subject. Divorces are made in Heaven

I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.

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

My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.