Lady Windermere's Fan: Act III

He’s entrammelled by this woman—fascinated by her—dominated by her.

If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.

We make gods of men and they leave us. Others make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful.

MRS. ERLYNNE. [Authoritatively.] Yes, you must! There is not a second to be lost. Lord Darlington may return at any moment.

You are on the brink of ruin, you are on the brink of a hideous precipice.

He shall have the worst scandal there has been in London for years. He shall see his name in every vile paper, mine on every hideous placard.

If you do, I will make my name so infamous that it will mar every moment of her life. It will ruin her, and make her wretched.

Had he come himself, I admit I would have gone back to the life of degradation you and he had prepared for me—I was going back—but to stay himself at home, and to send you as his messenger—oh! it was infamous—infamous.

Oh! to save you from the abyss into which you are falling, there is nothing in the world I would not dare, nothing in the whole world.

How do I know that that was my letter after all? You seem to think the commonest device can take me in!

LADY WINDERMERE. [Sullenly.] I do not love him!

Living at the mercy of a woman who has neither mercy nor pity in her, a woman whom it is an infamy to meet, a degradation to know, a vile woman, a woman who comes between husband and wife!

Only go back to your husband, and I promise you never to communicate with him again on any pretext—never to see him—never to have anything to do with his life or yours.

The money that he gave me, he gave me not through love, but through hatred, not in worship, but in contempt.

It is his love for you that has made him submit to—oh! call it what you like, tyranny, threats, anything you choose.

You are insolent! What have I to do with you?

MRS. ERLYNNE. [Humbly.] Nothing. I know it—but I tell you that your husband loves you—that you may never meet with such love again in your whole life—that such love you will never meet—and that if you throw it away, the day may come when you will starve for love and it will not be given to you, beg for love and it will be denied you—Oh! Arthur loves you!

[Starts, with a gesture of pain. Then restrains herself, and comes over to where LADY WINDERMERE is sitting. As she speaks, she stretches out her hands towards her, but does not dare to touch her.]

As for me, if suffering be an expiation, then at this moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to-night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken it.

Awfully commercial, women nowadays. Our grandmothers threw their caps over the mills, of course, but, by Jove, their granddaughters only throw their caps over mills that can raise the wind for them.

A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience.

A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience.

Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It’s as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

Now, my dear Tuppy, don’t be led astray into the paths of virtue.

They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don’t love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.

LORD DARLINGTON. The woman I love is not free, or thinks she isn’t. [Glances instinctively at LORD WINDERMERE while he speaks.]

I didn’t say it as a matter of conceit. I said it as a matter of regret. I have been wildly, madly adored. I am sorry I have. It has been an immense nuisance.

LORD DARLINGTON. What cynics you fellows are!
CECIL GRAHAM. What is a cynic? [Sitting on the back of the sofa.]
LORD DARLINGTON. A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

But I like talking to a brick wall—it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!