I used to think ambition the great thing. It is not. Love is the great thing in the world. There is nothing but love. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 3.
Oh! I don’t care about the London season! It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley, Act 1.
I like looking at geniuses, and listening to beautiful people. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Marchmont, Act 1.
Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It is most fashionable. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lady Markby, Act 1.
I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 1.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 1.
The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women…merely adored. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley, Act 1.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn’t so, life wouldn’t be worth living. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 1.
Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mabel Chiltern, Act 1.
Lady Basildon: Ah! I hate being educated! Mrs. Marchmont: So do I. It puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes, doesn’t it? – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Act 1.
Can’t make out how you stand London Society. The thing has gone to the dogs, a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Caversham, Act 1.
Lord Caversham: You seem to me to be living entirely for pleasure. Lord Goring: What else is there to live for, father? Nothing ages like happiness. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Act 1.
Lady Basildon: I delight in talking politics. I talk them all day long. But I can’t bear listening to them. I don’t know how the unfortunate men in the House stand these long debates. Lord Goring: By never listening. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Act 1.
Mrs. Cheveley…she was a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mabel Chiltern, Act 1.
I am thoroughly sick of pearls. They make one look so plain, so good and so intellectual. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mabel Chiltern, Act 1.
Truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 1.
I am not changed. But circumstances alter things. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 1.
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lady Markby, Act 1.
He rides in the Row at ten o’clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don’t call that leading an idle life, do you. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mabel Chiltern, Act 1.
I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don’t talk politics. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 1.
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley, Act 1.
Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley, Act 1.
Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 1.
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lady Chiltern, Act 1.
Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 2.
Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 2.
In England a man who can’t talk morality twice a week to a large, popular, immoral audience is quite over as a serious politician. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 2.
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 2.
The English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong. It is one of the best things in them. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lord Goring, Act 2.
