A family is a terrible incumbrance, especially when one is not married.
VERA, OR THE NIHILISTS |
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's relations.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE |
And now that I think of it I have never heard any man mention his brother. The subject seems distasteful to most men.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM |
As for domesticity, it ages one rapidly, and distracts one's mind from higher things.
THE REMARKABLE ROCKET |
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
'But when I think that they may lose their only son, I certainly am very much affected.' 'You certainly are!' cried the Bengal Light. 'In fact, you are the most affected person I ever met.'
THE REMARKABLE ROCKET |
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE |
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND |
Good novelists are much rarer than good sons.
ON A NEW BOOK ON DICKENS |
Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon...
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends.
THE REMARKABLE ROCKET |
I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
I seem to have heard that observation before, Ernest. It has all the vitality of error and all the tediousness of an old friend.
THE CRITIC AS ARTIST |
I think that generosity is the essence of friendship.
THE DEVOTED FRIEND |
I was in hopes he would have married Lady Kelso. But I believe he said her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forget which.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE |
It is a ridiculous attachment... she has no money, and far too many relations.
THE HAPPY PRINCE |
It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends.
THE REMARKABLE ROCKET |
It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and is far the best ending for one.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
Lord Illingworth: People's mothers always bore me to death. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE |
No one cares about distant relatives nowadays. They went out of fashion years ago.
LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME |
Now, Tuppy, you've lost your figure and you've lost your character. Don't lose your temper; you have only got one.
LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN |
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
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.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
The American father is better, for he is never in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street, and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher. The mother, however, is always with us, and, lacking the quick imitative faculty of the younger generation, remains uninteresting and provincial to the last.
THE AMERICAN INVASION |
The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
What is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain.
THE DEVOTED FRIEND |
What on earth you are serious about I haven't got the remotest idea. About everything, I should fancy. You have such an absolutely trivial nature.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST |
Women should not be idle in their homes. For idle fingers make a thoughtless heart.
A FLORENTINE TRAGEDY |
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