“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”

“One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.”

“The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.”

“The only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.”

“But don't you think one can be happy when on is married?Perfectly happy. But the happiness of a married man, my dear Gerald, depends on the people he has not married.But if one is in love?One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”

“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.”

“Society takes upon itself the right to inflictappalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice ofshallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man’s punishmentis over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at thevery moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamedof its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun acreditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflictedan irreparable, an irremediable wrong.”