La importància de ser Frank (1895)

ALGERNON: Ah! that must be Aunt Agusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.

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.

JACK: You're quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.
GWENDOLEN: Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.

LADY BRACKNELL: 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 shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid.

GWENDOLEN: We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told: and my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love you.

GWENDOLEN: Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.

LADY BRACKNELL: Mr. Worthing! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous.

LADY BRACKNELL: I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grovesnor Square.

CHAUSBLE: That is strange. Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism's pupil, I would hang upon her lips. [MISS PRISM glares.] I spoke metaphorically.—My metaphor was drawn from bees.

CECILY: I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else.

ALGERNON: Oh! I am not really wicked at all, cousin Cecily. You mustn't think that I am wicked.
CECILY: If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope that you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

MISS PRISM: And you do not seem to realize, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray.

CHAUSBLE: Your brother Ernest dead?
JACK: Quite dead.
MISS PRISM: What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it.

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

ALGERNON: If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. [Begins to eat muffins.]It is vulgar to talk about one's buisness. Only people like stock-brokers do that, and then merely at dinner-parties.
JACK: How can you sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can't make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.
ALGERNON: Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.