on Oscar Wilde......

my favorite quotes from "The Importance of Being Earnest": (I know--there are so many, but I really could have quoted the whole play, it is brilliant!) (Which is YOUR favorite?)


CECILY: "I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down I should probably forget all about them."


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


GWENDOLEN: "In fact, if I may speak candidly--"
CECILY: "Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid."


ALGERNON: "I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me in every way to be the visible personification of absolute perfection."
CECILY: "I think your frankness does you great credit, Ernest. If you will allow me I will copy your remarks into my diary." [Goes over to table and begins writing in diary.]
ALGERNON: "Do you keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?"
CECILY: "Oh, no." [Puts her hand over it.] "You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form, I hope you will order a copy. But pray, Ernest, don't stop. I delight in taking down from dictation. I have reached 'absolute perfection'. You can go on. I am quite ready for more."

JACK: "You don't think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?"

MISS PRISM: "Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us."


JACK: "Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any other girl.....I have ever met since....I met you."


JACK: "Well......may I propose to you now?"
GWENDOLEN: "I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that i am fully determined to accept you."


ALGERNON: "My letters! But my own sweet Cecily, I have never written you any letters."
CECILY: "You need hardly remind me of that, Ernest. I remember only too well that I was forced to write your letters for you. I wrote always three times a week and sometimes oftener."
ALGERNON: " Oh, do let me read them, Cecily?"
CECILY: "Oh, I couldn't possibly. That would make you far too conceited. The three you wrote me after I had broken off the engagement are so beautiful, and so badly spelled, that even now I can hardly read them without crying a little."


CECILY: "You must not laugh at me, darling, but it has always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose name is Ernest. There is something in that name that seems to inspire absolute confidence."


GWENDOLEN: " You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far."

ALGERNON: "You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that."

CECILY: "Mr. Moncrieff, kindly answer me the following question: Why did you pretend to be my guardian's brother?"
ALGERNON: " In order that I might have an opportunity of meeting you."
CECILY, to Gwendolen: "That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not?"
GWENDOLEN: "Yes, dear, if you can believe him."
CECILY: "I don't. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer."