ALGERNON.
My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
JACK.
Oh, that is nonsense!
ALGERNON.
It isn’t!
JACK.
Well, I won’t argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.
ALGERNON.
That is exactly what things were originally made for.
JACK.
Upon my word, if I thought that, I’d shoot myself . . . [A pause.] You don’t think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?
ALGERNON.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
JACK.
Is that clever?
ALGERNON.
It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation in civilised life should be.
JACK.
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.