The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.

Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

JACK That is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury. ALGERNON Then your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none. JACK That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. ALGERNON Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.

One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy.

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.