Any place you love is the world to you.
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don’t think it right.
To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one’s own relations.
Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.
Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that.
I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane. It never is, sir. Lane, you’re a perfect pessimist. I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.
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.
Most people are boring and stupid.