JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.

The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim - objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.

If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you.