A Woman of No Importance: A Play |
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Common terms and phrases
ACT II afraid ALLONBY ALLONBY Oh allow American ARBUTHNOT ARCHDEACON beautiful become believe better certainly charming child course Daubeny deal dear dear mother don't door English Enter everything Exit fancy father feel Footman GERALD Mother girl give goes happy hear HESTER hope HUNSTANTON My dear husband important interested Jane JOHN KELVIL kind LADY CAROLINE LADY HUNSTANTON Ah LADY STUTFIELD leave live look LORD ALFRED Lord Illing LORD ILLINGWORTH marriage marry mean Miss Worsley never nice night nowadays offer once perfectly poor Rachel remember Rises ruin secretary side SIR JOHN sits society sorry stand stay suppose sure talk tell terrace thing thought told turn understand views whole wife woman women wonderful worth wrong young
Popular passages
Page 95 - Of course, I made him so. Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. But I did not leave him with' a mere longing for things he could not get. No, I made him a charming offer. He jumped at it, I need hardly say. Any young man would. And now, simply because it turns out that I am the boy's own father and he my own son, you propose practically to ruin his career. That is to say, if I were a perfect stranger, you would allow Gerald to go away with me.
Page 70 - You rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don't know how to live — you don't even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that...
Page 111 - GERALD I suppose society is wonderfully delightful ! LORD ILLINGWORTH To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy. Society is a necessary thing. No man has any real success in this world unless he has got women to back him, and women rule society.
Page 17 - Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the old lady, shaking her head. Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. "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.
Page 20 - The youth of America is their oldest tradition . It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood. As far as civilization goes they are in their second.
Page 34 - Not in our day. Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.
Page 72 - It is right that they should be punished, but don't let them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on each, but don't punish the one and let the other go free. Don't have one law for men and another for women.
Page 44 - Yes, let us stay here. The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. MRS. ALLONBY. It ends with Revelations.
Page 23 - Silliest word in our language, and one knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Page 114 - Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Bibliographic information
| Title | A Woman of No Importance: A Play Oscar Wilde Volume 1 of “A” Woman of No Importance: A Play, Oscar Wilde |
| Author | Oscar Wilde |
| Publisher | Methuen, 1908 |
| Original from | Harvard University |
| Digitized | Mar 5, 2008 |
| Length | 191 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |