JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Be yourself; everyone else is taken.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

It doesn't matter how green a blade of grass is expected to be, when it's already smashed beneath the feet.

Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

You think everyone will stay behind and do everything you did all over again, forever. You picture old geezers in jean jackets doing whip-its behind the plaza.

In all my life, I have never been free. I have never been able to do anything with freedom, except in the field of my writing.

I was an uncommonly unattractive young man.

Your power ends where your fear begins.

If I know I'm going crazy, I must not be insane.

A good work can be communicated across languages ... [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking.

It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!

A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war.