Importance Of Being Earnest Quotes

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

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

I’ve now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.

A man who desires to get married should know everything or nothing.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

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.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

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

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?

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

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.

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