The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon Moncrieff:
I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It's very romantic to be in love but there's nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one might be accepted. One usually is I believe. Then the whole excitement is over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Lady Bracknell:
Are your parents living?

Jack Worthing:
I have lost both my parents.

Lady Bracknell:
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Lady Bracknell:
Do you smoke?

Jack Worthing:
Well yes, I must admit I smoke.

Lady Bracknell:
I'm glad to hear it. A man should have an occupation of some kind.

Lady Bracknell:
Thirty-five is an attractive age. London is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Canon Chasuble:
Charity dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.

Jack Worthing:
Algy, you don't suppose that Gwendolyn will become like her mother - in about one hundred and fifty years, do you?

Algernon Moncrieff:
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Jack Worthing:
You are quite perfect Miss Fairfax.

Gwendolyn Fairfax:
Oh I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.

Cecily Cardew:
When I see a spade I call it a spade.

Gwendolyn Fairfax:
I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.

Miss Prism:
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Gwendolyn Fairfax:
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on a train.

Lady Bracknell:
To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people an opportunity of finding out each other's characters before marriage. Which I think is never advisable

Lady Bracknell:
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.

Jack Worthing:
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?

Jack Worthing:
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we still had a few fools left.

Algernon Moncreiff:
We have.

Jack Worthing:
I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?

Algernon Moncreiff:
The fools? Oh, about the clever people, of course.

Jack Worthing:
What fools!

Lady Bracknell:
A handbag!

Algernon Moncrieff:
Oh! I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn't think that I am wicked.

Cecily Cardew:
If you are not, then you have certainly have been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Lady Bracknell:
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.

Jack Worthing:
Well, I don't see how I could possibly manage to do that, Lady Bracknell. I can produce the hand-bag at any moment. It is in my dressing-room at home. I really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell.

Lady Bracknell:
Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!

Gwendolyn Fairfax:
There comes a time when speaking one's mind ceases to be a moral duty, it becomes a pleasure.

Gwendolyn Fairfax:
In an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind, it becomes a pleasure.