'As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte.'
'And, speaking of the science of Life, have you got the cucumber sandwiches cut?'
'- I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
- Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising as that?
- [...]I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a
misunderstanding between myself and a young person.'
'the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.'
'I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over.'
'Divorces are made in Heaven.'
'- Please don't touch the cucumber sandwiches. They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta.
- Well, you have been eating them all the time.
- That is quite a different matter. She is my aunt. Have some bread and butter. The bread and butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.
- And very good bread and butter it is too.
- [...] you need not eat as if you were going to eat it all. You behave as if you were married to her already.'
'girls never marry the men they flirt with.'
'But why does your aunt call you her uncle? 'From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.' There is no objection, I admit, to an aunt being a small aunt, but why an aunt, no matter what her size may be, should call her own nephew her uncle, I can't quite make out. Besides, your name isn't Jack at all; it is Ernest.'
'The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!'
'To begin with, [...] once a week is quite enough to dine with one's own relations. In the second place, whenever I do dine there I am always treated as a member of the family, and sent down with either no woman at all, or two.'
'[...] Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent... and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It in simply washing one's clean linen in public.'
'in married life three is company and two is none.'
'- For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.
- My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about.'
'Ah! that must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.'
'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.'
'- Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax.
- 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 so nervous.
- I do mean something else.
- I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong.
- And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady Bracknell's temporary absence...
- I would certainly advise you to do so. Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room'
'- Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl... I have ever met since... I met you.
- Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative.'
'- I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma.
- Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.'
'- However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answers be what a really affectionate mother requires. Do you smoke?
- Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
- I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.'
'- a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
- (after some hesitation) I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
- I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound.'
'To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.'
'- Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon... I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair... I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn't talk about your own aunt in that way before you.
- My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.'
'- You don't think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?
- All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.'
'- I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
- We have.
- I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?
- The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.
- What fools!'
/from "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde/
[protams, es te varētu iekopēt visu grāmatu :P bet es jau tāpat ierakstīju par daudz, lai kāds vsp to visu izlasītu.] |