In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way. I don’t think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.
And now, dear Mr. Worthing, I will not intrude any longer into a house of sorrow. I would merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief. What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. This seems to me a blessing of an extremely obvious kind.
JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.
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?
I find I have, and a heart doesn’t suit me, Windermere. Somehow it doesn’t go with modern dress. It makes one look old.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts.
No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself.
I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.
You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.
The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
Most people are boring and stupid.
I am afraid that woman appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated.
Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?
Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.
What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless.
He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.
How long could you love a woman who didn’t love you, Cecil? A woman who didn’t love me? Oh, all my life!