“If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)”

“I never change.MRS. CHEVELEY: (elevating her eyebrows) Then life has taught you nothing?LADY CHILTERN: It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonorable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.MRS. CHEVELEY: Whould that rule apply to everyone?LADY CHILTERN: Yes, to everyone, without exception.MRS. CHEVELEY: Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you.”

“LADY HUNSTANTON Lord Illingworth, you don't think that uneducated people should be allowed to have votes?LORD ILLINGWORTH I think they are the only people who should.”

“High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”

“I don't care about the London season! It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them.”

“My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect---simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story. ”

“The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art.”