Monday, November 8, 2010

The Importance of Being Earnest

Read The Importance of Being Earnest for a class I'm taking. I remember liking this play when I had to read it in high school. Upon reading it again at this time, I've found I've picked up more quotes from this play. Some of them rather cheeky. Others somewhat satirical. Jolly good, Mr. Wilde. Below I've simply copied down some of the lines/quotes that stood out to me or that I liked.




Act I:


ALGERNON: I really don't see anything romantic about proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. but there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. one usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
~61-65

ALGERNON: Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right...It is a great truth. It accounts for the extraordinary number of bachelors that one sees all over the place.
~82-86

JACK: My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. it is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.
ALGERNON: Well, that is exactly what dentists always do.
~149-151

ALGERNON: All women become like heir mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
~529-530

ALGERNON: The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.
~546-547

JACK: You never talk anything but nonsense.
ALGERNON: No one ever does.
~639-640


Act II


MISS PRISM: No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.
CHASUBLE: And often, I've been told, not even to her.
~181-182

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.
~765-767


Act III


GWENDOLEN: How absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes! Where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us. 
JACK: We are.
CECILY: They have moments of physical courage of which we women know absolutely nothing.
~54-58


LADY BRACKNELL: To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which i think is never advisable.
~180-183

LADY BRACKNELL: Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
~216-217

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