Friday, October 05, 2007
Making Up Oscar Wilde QuotesOscar Wilde is my favourite playwright. The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband are both thoroughly enjoyable scripts and have been turned into wonderful movies as well. To this day, if I disappear from the office for a jaunt, I tell my secretary that I am going for a meeting at my client Bunbury's office.
It's Wilde's irreverent characters with their witty one-liners that really resonate with me. Some of my favourites are the following:
"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain." Algernon, Act I, The Importance of Being Earnest.
"To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." Lady Bracknell, Act I, The Importance of Being Earnest.
"If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated." Algernon, Act II , The Importance of Being Earnest.
"Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years." Lady Bracknell, Act III, The Importance of Being Earnest.
"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself." Lord Goring, Act I, An Ideal Husband.
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." Lord Goring, Act III, An Ideal Husband.
"My dear father, if we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it." Lord Goring, Act IV , An Ideal Husband.
"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." Lord Illingsworth, A Woman of No Importance.
In addition to these however, I have recently come across a webpage which specializes in fake quotes attributed to Oscar Wilde. The Uncyclopedia (world's largest repository of fake "information") lists Making Up Oscar Wilde Quotes as the national sport of England. Many of the quotes are complete rubbish of course. However, spend enough time sifting through them and a few genuinely funny ones emerge, when you understand their original context and picture Oscar Wilde saying them:
"SPARTANS, ATTACK!"
"I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking carriage!” Oscar Wilde, from Snakes On A Carriage.
"I have nothing to declare but my genuis. And this four kilogram bag of cocaine."
"No one wants to see a play called 'Lady Windermere's Fan'. It's going to be called 'Cocks in Frocks II' or I will find another publisher."
"There's a bit of gay in everyone. Just normally, it's a part of me."
# posted by Fore! @ 3:20 PM 
