“Being a father
Is quite a bother,
But I like it, rather.”

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: A Fire in the Sun (1989), Chapter 20 (p. 280).

Jack, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Many Long Years Ago (1945), A Watched Example Never Boils

Reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862), published in Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons (1886), edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife, p. 11.
Context: When quite young I can remember I had no thought or wish of surpassing others. I was rather taken with a liking of little arts and bits of learning. My mother carefully fostered a liking for botany, giving me a small microscope and many books, which I yet have. Strange as it may seem, I now believe that botany and the natural system, by exercising discrimination of kinds, is the best of logical exercises. What I may do in logic is perhaps derived from that early attention to botany.

New York Times, 7 October 1962.

Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: Whenever in my dreams, I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of mine they never knew. They sit apart, frowning at the floor, as if death were a dark taint, a shameful family secret. It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction.

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 4 “At the Court of Capa Barsavi” section 5 (p. 219)

Speaking to autograph seeker, as quoted in "'Never Happier in My Life' Ruth Tells Grantland Rice..."