“Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”

“My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.”

“It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.”

“The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.  What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.”

“JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.”

“Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood”

“Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.”