“To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!”

“People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—”

“When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.”

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”

“It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.”