40 Best 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' Quotes By Oscar Wilde

'The Importance Of Being Earnest' is one of the most famous plays written by Oscar Wilde which is a  comedy for serious people.

'The Importance Of Being Earnest' is packed with satirical humor which most people find entertaining. Oscar Wilde satirizes rigid Victorian culture and the norms of marriage, courtship, and love.

With the help of satirical wit, the play ridicules the Victorian desire for "earnestness" and teaches us the importance of being true to oneself despite showing society another side of you which is fake. Here's a great list of quotes from this iconic play. If you have time, get the book and really read it properly and you will realize how great a playwright Wilde is.

If you like our content, you can check out other articles like 'Death Of A Salesman' quotes and ['Much Ado About Nothing' quotes].

Here is a list of some of the best quotes from the first act which include quotes about lying and 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' marriage quotes. You will find some important quotes from 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' here.

1. "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!"

-Algernon.

2. "Girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don’t think it right…it is a great truth."

-Algernon.

3. "Mr. Worthing! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous."

- Lady Bracknell.

4. "When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring."

-Jack.

5. "Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility."

-Algernon.

6. "My ideal has always been to love someone of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence."

-Gwendolyn.

7. "Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere?"

-Jack.

8. "I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude."

-Gwendolyn.

9. "The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public."

-Algernon.

10. "I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone."

-Lady Bracknell.

11. "Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner."

- Algernon.

12. "The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

- Algernon.

13. "I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids."

-Lady Bracknell.

14. "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."

15. "To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution."

-Lady Bracknell.

16. "What between the duties expected of one during one’s lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be said about land."

-Lady Bracknell.

17. "The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to some one else, if she is plain."

-Algernon.

18. "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his."

-Algernon.

19. "Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die."

-Algernon.

20. "I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them."

-Jack.

21. "It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind."

-Algernon.

22. "I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over."

-Lady Bracknell.

23. "You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel."

- Lady Bracknell.

Are you looking for a 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' quote on satire? This list from the second act will satiate your humor cravings.

24. "Australia! I’d sooner die."

-Algernon.

25. "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

-Miss Prism.

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

-Gwendolyn.

27. "Cecily: When I see a spade I call it a spade.

Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different."

- 'The Importance Of Being Earnest'.

28. "If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated."

-Algernon.

29. "Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray."

-Miss Prism.

30. "But I don’t like German. It isn’t at all a becoming language. I know perfectly well that I look quite plain after my German lesson."

-Cecily.

Here is a wholesome list of quotes from the third act of the play.

31.  "Three addresses always inspire confidence, even in tradesmen."

-Lady Bracknell.

32. "Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything."

-Lady Bracknell.

33. "I have the gravest doubts upon the subject. But I intend to crush them. This is not the moment for German skepticism."

-Gwendolyn.

34. "I never change, except in my affections."

-Gwendolyn.

35. "I do not know whether there is anything peculiarly exciting in the air of this particular part of Hertfordshire, but the number of engagements that go on seems to me considerably above the proper average that statistics have laid down for our guidance."

-Lady Bracknell.

36. "Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?"

- Jack.

37. "Until yesterday I had no idea that there were any families or persons whose origin was a Terminus."

-Lady Bracknell.

38. "Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that."

-Lady Bracknell.

39. "In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing."

-Gwendolyn.

40. "I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest."

-Jack.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' quotes then why not take a look at : [Charles Dickens quotes], or [Shakespeare quotes about love].