“If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.”

“My dear fellow why have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are. You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”

“Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.”

“If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbroker's do that, and then merely at dinner parties.”