The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

Lady Bracknell: Well, I must say, Algy, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd.

Cecily: What a charming boy, I like his hair so much.

Lady Bracknell: Sorry if we are a little late, Algy. I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I have not been there since her husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered. She looks quite twenty years younger.

Lady Bracknell: You seem to be displaying signs of triviality.
Jack: On the contrary, Aunt Augusta. I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital importance of being Ernest.

Algy: I really don't see what is so romantic about proposing. One may be accepted - one usually is, I believe - and then the excitement is ended. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Lady Bracknell: I don't know whether there is anything particularly exciting about the air in this particular part of Hertfordshire, but the number of engagements that go on seem to me to be considerably above the proper average that statistics have laid down for our guidance.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.

Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

Algy: Do you mean you couldn't love me if I had a different name?
Cecily: But what name?
Algy: Well... Algy, for instance.
Cecily: I might respect you, Earnest, I might admire your character, but I feel that I could never give you my undivided attention.

Algy: I don't seem to care about anything anymore... I only care for you. I love you Cecily. Will you marry me?
Cecily: Why, of course! We've been engaged for the past 3 months.
Algy: ...3 months?

Gwendolyn: Where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned, men are infinitely beyond us.

Lady Bracknell: I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delecate, 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. If it did it would prove a serious threat to the upper classes, and probably lead ot acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Jack: I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Algy: Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.

Lady Bracknell: The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.

Jack: Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to.

Gwendolyn: In matters of utmost importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.