Act I Quotes

“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. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“So shows a snowy dove topping with crows, as yonder lady o’er her fellows shows. The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand, and, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
― 
William Shakespeare