“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?”

— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

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Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.

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Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Adams could no more interest Algernon Swinburne than he could interest Encke's comet. To Swinburne he could be no more than a worm. The quality of genius was an education almost ultimate, for one touched there the limits of the human mind on that side; but one could only receive; one had nothing to give — nothing even to offer.”

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Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 273.
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“A man with charm is an entertaining thing, and a man with looks is, ofcourse, a sight to behold, but a man with honor - ah, he is the one, dear reader, to which young ladies should flock.”

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“Jack: Actually, I was found.
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Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn’t got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got.”

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“Look at that young, active, energetic Hindu who has received education in some English school or college. Yesterday what was he? An ignorant Indian. To-day what is he? An active, intelligent, fine-looking, educated man. Tomorrow what is he? He has English books on one side, he has the dangerous bottle of whisky on the other side. What is he the next day? Oh sad catastrophe! The whole house mourns the death of the promising young man.”

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“Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things; money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humoured, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich — that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.”

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“Man, when he is merely what he seems to be, is almost nothing.”

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El hombre, cuando es solamente lo que parece ser el hombre, casi no es nada.
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“He was extremely important to his contemporaries, who wanted nothing more than to see in his the Expected One; they wanted almost to press it upon him and and to force him into the role - but that he then refuses to be that!”

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