“I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.”

“Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?”

“Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”

“I am afraid it is quite clear, Cecily, that neither of us is engaged to be married to any one.”

“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.""Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.""I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.”

“Cecily: “Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare”Algernon: “They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.”Cecily: “Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.”

“Jack: [Slowly and hesitatingly] “Gwendolen–Cecily–it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.”