Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.