Fryderyk Franciszek Adam’s Reviews > The Importance of Being Earnest > Status Update

Miss Prism. Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Cecily. Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn’t possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.

Dear Uncle Jack is so very serious! Sometimes he is so serious that I think he cannot be quite well.

Lane. Yes, sir. [Handing sherry.]

Algernon. I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.

Lane. It never is, sir.

Algernon. Lane, you’re a perfect pessimist.

Lane. I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.

Do you know it is nearly seven?

Jack. [Irritably.] Oh! It always is nearly seven.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people.

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.

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.

Jack. For heaven’s sake, don’t try to be cynical. It’s perfectly easy to be cynical.

Algernon. My dear fellow, it isn’t easy to be anything nowadays. There’s such a lot of beastly competition about.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn’t a dentist. It produces a false impression.