Since Algernon is such a brilliantly written character with some of the most witty and humourous dialogue, I decided to compile a small collection of quotes. Just to note, some of these are copied down from the play while others from the movie.
Jack: I have a perfect right to eat my own muffins in my own garden. Algy: But you have just said it was heartless to eat muffins. Jack: No, I said it was heartless for you under the circumstances. This is entirely different.
Jack: Algy, you're always talking nonsense. Algy: It's better than listening to it.
Algy: But, what if I had some other name? Cecily: Another name? Algy: Well... Algy, for instance. Cecily: I would greatly respect you, but I wouldn't love you.
Algy: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Algy: Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information. Lane: I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households, the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand. Algy: Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
Algy: Lane's views on marriage seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seems, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
Algy: My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as bad as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.
Jack: I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come up to town expressly to propose to her. Algy: I thought you had come up for pleasure?... I call that business! Jack: How utterly unromantic you are! Algy: I don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Algy: If I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget that fact.
Algy: Divorces are made in Heaven.
Algy: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Algy: [Aunt Agusta] will place me next to Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent... and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.
Algy: I hate people who are serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
Algy: [after having eaten all the sandwiches, picking up the plate in horror] Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.
Algy: 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: Well, I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. Algy: That is exactly what things were originally made for.
Algy: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
Jack: I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about? Algy: The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course. Jack: What fools!
Algy: Is is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.
Algy: If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
Algy: When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment, I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins.
Algy: I wish you would have tea-cake instead. I don't like tea-cake.
Algy: Jack, you are at the muffins again! I wish you wouldn't. There are only two left. I told you I was particularly fond of muffins. Jack: But I hate tea-cake. Algy: Why on earth do you allow tea-cake to be served up for your guests? What ideas you have of hospitality!
Algy: Oh no! Bunbury doesn't live here. Bunbury is someone else at the present. In fact, Bunbury is dead.