The Importance Of Being Earnest Quotes

Front 1

Algernon: ‘Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.’

Back 1

Inversion of apparent norms, the higher class were meant to be the ones setting the example

Front 2

Algernon: ‘I thought you had come up for pleasure?....I call that business.’

Back 2

Marriage seen as a transaction, a means to an end

Front 3

Algernon: ‘Divorces are made in heaven.’

Back 3

Epigram inverting ideas on marriage

Front 4

Algernon: ‘More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.’

Back 4

Oscar Wilde’s ideas on censorship

Front 5

Algernon: ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.’

Back 5

Another Epigram, commenting on over-simplification but also ideas of lies and there being several versions of the truth

Front 6

Lady Bracknell: ‘I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger.’

Back 6

Ideas on death, and the constraints of marriage

Front 7

Algernon: ‘I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.’

Back 7

Again Algernon is used as a mouthpiece for Wilde’s ideas

Front 8

Lady Bracknell: ‘I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.’

Back 8

Inversion, ideas of style over substance. Lady Bracknell, despite seeming to be a well-read powerful character, seems to distrust education

Front 9

Cecily: ‘I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.’

Back 9

Cecily presents another inversion, possibly showing that she’s been romanticising the idea of him.

Front 10

Cecily: ‘It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time.’

Back 10

Inversion, suggests people you’ve known longer are dull?

Front 11

Gwendolen: ‘The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?’

Back 11

Inversion of gender roles and ideas

Front 12

Cecily: ‘Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London.’

Back 12

Pun, underhand comment as they feel they can’t insult each other openly

Front 13

Gwendolen: ‘True. In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.’

Back 13

Epigram, contrasts with the ideas of the day that you had to be a person ‘of substance’

Front 14

Lady Bracknell: ‘We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces.’

Back 14

Points out the Victorian obsession with appearance

Front 15

Lady Bracknell: ‘He has nothing, but he looks everything.’

Back 15

Lady Bracknell uses Algernon’s surface appearance as justification of why he’d make a good husband

Front 16

Lady Bracknell: ‘Algernon? Impossible! He is an Oxonian.’

Back 16

Ideas that because a person is of a certain class, and have gone to a certain school, that they can’t be immoral.

Front 17

Jack: ‘Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to.’

Back 17

Little bit oxymoronic, Jack is being petty and possibly hinting that if they want to sleep with each other they’ll have to do it secretly

Front 18

Lady Bracknell: ‘The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.’

Back 18

Idea of being two different people, hypocrisy

Front 19

Algernon: [Stammering] Oh! No! Bunbury doesn't live here. Bunbury is somewhere else at present. In fact, Bunbury is dead.

Back 19

Through lying, Algernon sets himself up for a more ethical future with Cecily

Front 20

Jack: I always told you, Gwendolen, my name was Ernest, didn't I? Well, it is Ernest after all. I mean it naturally is Ernest.

Back 20

It turns out he was earnest about being Ernest but this truth telling my not continue.

Front 21

Algernon: Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

Back 21

Either, you need a good friend to get you through marriage, the only happy marriages are one where affairs are involved, or both. Also a comment on Wilde’s life

Front 22

Miss Prism: [Bitterly] People who live entirely for pleasure usually are.

Back 22

Prism sees marriage as a duty, like Algernon, except she sees it as a mark of pride

Front 23

Cecily: It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it hadn't been broken off at least once. But I forgave you before the week was out.

Back 23

Cecily invents the whole story, it has a very fake, story like quality. Shows her immaturity

Front 24

Lady Bracknell: To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

Back 24

Love was often more for politics than attraction, so getting to know a person before marrying them may be a bad plan

Front 25

Algernon: Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

Back 25

Girls flirt with those they are attracted to, but marry for money

Front 26

Jack: Do you mean the fashion, or the side?

Back 26

Highlights the stupidity of fashion

Front 27

Lady Bracknell: who is that young person whose hand my nephew Algernon is now holding in what seems to me a peculiarly unnecessary manner?

Back 27

All hand holding and affection was seen as improper in public, but the fact they carry on hints that they don’t care.

Front 28

Jack: [In a very patronising manner] My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!

Back 28

Gender ideas, women were meant to be pure and innocent, the ‘truth’ would be too harsh for them.