Rupert Everett credited as playing...
Lord Goring
- Lord Caversham: What are you doing here, sir? Wasting your time, as usual?
- Lord Arthur Goring: My dear father, when one pays a visit, it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time and not one's own.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Gertrude, it is not the perfect, but rather the imperfect who have need of love.
- Gertrude: You seem to know a great deal about it all of a sudden.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Oh, I hope not. All I know, Gertrude, is that it takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love. Gertrude, you have more courage than any woman I have ever known. Do not be afraid now to use it.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
- Mabel: You are very late!
- Lord Arthur Goring: Have you missed me?
- Mabel: Awfully!
- Lord Arthur Goring: Then I am sorry I did not stay away longer. I like being missed.
- Mabel: How very selfish of you!
- Lord Arthur Goring: I am very selfish.
- Mabel: Lord Goring, you are always telling me about your bad qualities.
- Lord Arthur Goring: I haven't told you half of them as yet, Miss Mabel.
- Mabel: Really? Are the others very bad?
- Lord Arthur Goring: Quite dreadful! When I think of them at night, I go to sleep at once.
- Mabel: Lord Goring, I gather you're to be congratulated.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Well, there's nothing I like more than to be congratulated, though invariably I find the pleasure immeasurably increased when I know what for.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Mrs. Cheveley.
- Laura: Call me Laura.
- Lord Arthur Goring: I don't like that name.
- Laura: You used to adore it.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Yes, that is why.
- Lord Caversham: I don't know how you stand society. A lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing.
- Lord Arthur Goring: I love talking about nothing, Father. It's the only thing I know anything about.
- Lord Caversham: That is a paradox, sir. I hate paradoxes.
- Lord Arthur Goring: So do I, Father. Everyone one meets is a paradox nowadays. It makes society so - obvious.
- Lord Caversham: You are 36.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Shh! Father! I only admit to 32.
- Lord Caversham: You are 36 and you must get a wife.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Wife?
- Gertrude: Yes, Arthur, it is Robert himself who wishes to retire from public life.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Rather than risk losing your love, he would do anything. Has he not been punished enough?
- Gertrude: We've both been punished. I set him up too high.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Do not set him down now too low.
- Lord Caversham: Now, if you don't make her an ideal husband, I'll cut you off with a shilling.
- Mabel: An ideal husband? Oh, I don't think I should like that.
- Lord Caversham: What do you want him to be then, my dear?
- Mabel: I think he can be whatever he chooses.
- Lord Caversham: You don't deserve her, sir.
- Lord Arthur Goring: My dear father, if we men married the women we deserved... we should have a very bad time of it.
- Lord Arthur Goring: I love you... I love you.
- Mabel: Is that your reason then?
- Lord Arthur Goring: Mmm. Mabel, I said...
- Mabel: I know.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Well? Couldn't you you love me just a little bit in return?
- Mabel: Arthur, you silly! If you knew anything about anything, which you don't, you would know that I absolutely adore you.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Really?
- Mabel: Mmm.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Well, why didn't you say anything before?
- Mabel: Because, dear boy, you never would have believed me.
- Countess: Aren't you going to congratulate me?
- Lord Arthur Goring: Congratulations.
- Countess: Aren't you going to ask what for?
- Lord Arthur Goring: What for?
- Countess: I've made a great decision. I've decided to get married.
- Lord Arthur Goring: My God! Who to?
- Countess: That part is yet to be decided.
- Lord Caversham: Do you always understand everything you say?
- Lord Arthur Goring: Yes... if I listen attentively.
- Lord Caversham: Conceited young puppy!
- Sir Robert Chiltern: Do you know, Arthur, I sometimes wish I were you.
- Lord Arthur Goring: Do you know, Robert, sometimes I wish you were too. Except that you would probably make something useful out of my life, and that would never do.
- Sir Robert Chiltern: Anyway, what's that saying about the sea and there being plenty of fish in it?
- Lord Arthur Goring: Ah, yes, but I couldn't possibly marry a fish. I'd be sure to land an old trout.
- Lord Arthur Goring: My dear Mrs. Cheveley, I should make you a very bad husband.
- Laura: I don't mind bad husbands. I've had two. They amused me immensely.
- Lord Arthur Goring: [to statue] It is a great nuisance. I can't find anyone else to talk to. I'm so full of interesting information, I feel like the latest edition of something or other. Well, after some consideration... so much to do, there's only one thing to be done. There comes a time in every son's life when he must, indeed, follow his father's advice: I shall go to bed at once.