Quotes on Importance Of Being Earnest

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

It is awfully hard work doing 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.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. 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. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

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.

In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

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

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?

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

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

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.

Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.

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

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

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!

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

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

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?