Importance of Being Earnest Quotes

I play with wonderful expression

Oh pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring anyone anywhere? Act1.40

Now produce your explanation, and pray make it improbable. Act1.186

Cecily is not a silly romantic girl, I am glad to say. She has got a capital appetite, goes long walks, and pays no attention at all to her lessons.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. Act1.690

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious. Act1.751

Jack: a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness (I.83)

My dear fellow, it isn’t easy to be anything nowadays. Act1.278

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. (I.88)

I was very near offering a large reward. Act1.117

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring. Act1.47

Really if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? Act1.33

A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country. Act1.517

You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know. Act1.222

Jack: [Slowly and hesitatingly] It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind. (II.348)

Jack: What nonsense! I haven’t got a brother.

Cecily: Oh, don’t say that. However badly he may have behaved to you in the past he is still your brother. You couldn’t be so heartless as to disown him. I’ll tell him to come out. And you will shake hands with him, won’t you, Uncle Jack? (II.133-135)

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Act1.214

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit;touch it and the bloom is gone. Act1.496

You are the most earnest looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn’t Ernest. It’s on your cards. Act1.161

That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. Act1.292

I intend to develop in many directions. Act1.297

I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. She looks quite twenty years younger. Act1.299

It is high time Mr.Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or die. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. Act1.345

It is my last reception, … the end of the season when everyone has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much. Act1.352

In fact, I am never wrong. Act1.379

And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. Act1.387

My ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Earnest. Act1.394

I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that I am fully determined to accept you. Act1.440

Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous. Act1.458

Looks in her pocket for note-book and pencil Act1.478

Relations are simply a tedious lack of people, who haven't got the remotest idea of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die. Act1.612

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man is. That's his. Act1.625

My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice sweet refined girl. Act1.641

Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first. Act1.675

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. Act1. 506

A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far to many idle men in London. Act1.487

It is simply washing one's clean linen in public. Act1.251

Is marriage so demoralising as that? ActI.22

The very essence of romance is uncertainty. Act1.76

Girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right. Act1.98

the happy English home has produced in half the time. Act1.274

Living entirely for pleasure now. I hear her hair has turned quite gold with grief. Act1. 320

I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. Act1.465

Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy? Act1.540

The line is immaterial. Act1.568
display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds me of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

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? Act1.592

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain. Act1.644

I may marry someone else, and marry often, nothing that she can possibly do can alter my eternal devotion to you. Act1.705

in married life three is company and two is none. Act1.270

Divorces are made in heaven. Act1.82

I thought you had come up for pleasure? I call that business. Act1.70

I do not give my consent.Act1.103

you are not down on my list of eligible young men, although I have the same list as the Dear Duchess of Bolton has. We work together, in fact. Act1.480

Try and acquire some relation as soon as possible. Act1.584