ALGERNON. My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
ALGERON. If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
ALGERNON. Do you really keep a diary? I’d give anything to look at it. May I? CECILY. Oh no. [Puts her hand over it]. You see, it is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.
CECILY. Oh yes. Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.
GWENDOLEN. Personally I cannot understand how anybody manages to exist in the country, if anybody who is anybody does. The country always bores me to death. CECILY. Ah! This is what the newspapers call agricultural depression, is it not? I believe the aristocracy are suffering very much from it just at present. It is almost an epidemic amongst them, I have been told. May I offer you some tea, Miss Fairfax?