“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Lord Darlington, Act III
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Quotes from work
Lady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London.The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is having an affair with another woman. She confronts him with it but although he denies it, he invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's supposed unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere decides to leave her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. It is then revealed Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter's marriage.
Mrs. Erlynne, Act IV
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.”
Lady Windermere, Act IV
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
Cecil Graham http://books.google.com/books?id=8SzYgCNz-vwC&q="Gossip+is+charming+History+is+merely+gossip+But+scandal+is+gossip+made+tedious+by+morality"&pg=PT52#v=onepage, Act III
Variant: Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
Lord Darlington, Act I
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Cecil Graham, Act II
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889), p. 5
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
“I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.”
Mr. Dumby, Act II
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.”
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
“I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!”
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
“My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.”
Cecil Graham, Act III
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Mr. Dumby, Act III
Variant: There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
