Oscar Wilde Importance Of Being Earnest Quotations

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

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.

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

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.

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

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

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.

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.

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

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

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