He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression...
The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.
Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.
Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.
I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.
Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.
No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman’s bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.
Only love can keep anyone alive...
You know I have loved him always. But we are very poor. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden...
When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.
We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.
I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. 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.
You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is.
Sometimes, the unnecessary is necessary.
It is better to repent a sin than regret the loss of a pleasure.
The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.
There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.