I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.

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

Imitation is the homage mediocrity pays to greatness.

I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.

There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.