An Ideal Husband

it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

most nonchalant manner.] My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am. I hope you will be more reasonable in your terms.

Of course. You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

What sort of a woman is she?
LORD GORING. Oh! a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night!

You are very late!
LORD GORING. Have you missed me?
MABEL CHILTERN. Awfully!
LORD GORING. Then I am sorry I did not stay away longer. I like being missed.

Politics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is not fashionable to flirt till one is forty, or to be romantic till one is forty-five, so we poor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have nothing open to us but politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more . . . becoming!

think science cannot grapple with the problem of women?
MRS. CHEVELEY. Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

the strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women . . . merely adored.

, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.