Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Ernest

Oscar Wilde is one of my favorite writers. I love his wit and all the great little quotes that he so consistently spews out. Almost everything that every character says sounds like something that should be repeated. Having said that, however, this is not my favorite of his works. I like An Ideal Husband more because I like the characters better. I understand that The Importance of Being Ernest was poking fun at the aristocratic society of the day, but I still find the major characters unbearably silly. But some of my favorite quotes by Wilde are in this play, and here they come:

Good Quotes

"Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read." Act 1

"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 Grosvenor Square." Act 1

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his." Act 1

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain." Act 1

"An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be." Act 1

"It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind." Act 1

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!" Act 1

"What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know." Act 1

"Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read." Act 1

"Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die." Act 1

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune--to lose both seems like carelessness." Act 1

"The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present." Act 3

"And what makes his conduct all the more heartless is, that he was perfectly well aware from the first that I have no brother, that I never had a brother, and that I don't intend to have a brother, not even of any kind. I distinctly told him so myself yesterday afternoon." Act 3