The Importance of Being Earnest Quotes
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Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
Author: Oscar Wilde
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
JACK: When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. It's one's duty to do so. And as a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one's health or one's happiness, in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes. That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.
ALGERNON: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
JACK: That wouldn't be at all a bad thing.
Context
This line is spoken by Algernon in the play The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Oscar Wilde (1895).
Oscar Wilde's play is all about truth…and what happens when you don't make of habit of telling it. Jack Worthing is Cecily Cardew's guardian, which is pretty boring. So, he pretends to have a rowdy younger brother, Ernest, who's always getting into trouble. Every once in a while, Jack's got to rush to London to clean up one of Ernest's messes…and have a little fun himself.
In this scene, his friend Algernon finally finds out about the little scam that Jack has been running and decides he might try something like it to woo Jack's ward Cecily. Hilarity and a whole lot of misunderstandings ensue from there, but Algernon's words turn out to be true—the truth turns out to be a whole lot more complicated than you'd actually imagine it to be.
Where you've heard it
No quote-a-thon about the truth and its consequences would be complete without this gem from Oscar Wilde.
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
Okay, you've gotta admit, this is just a little bit pretentious, right? Sometimes telling the truth really is the easiest way to go. Maybe it's just liars (like Jack and Algernon) who want us to believe that the truth is oh-so strange and complex.