- Oscar Wilde: [to Lord Alfred] Shall I tell you of the great drama of my life? It is that I put my genius into my life, but only my talent into my work. Writing *bores* me so.
- Oscar Wilde: London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the serious people produce the fogs or the fogs produce the serious people, I really don't know. But the whole thing rather gets on my nerves.
- Constance Wilde: [being worried because he was late, Constance greets Oscar as he finally arrives home] Oscar! Where have you been?
- Oscar Wilde: My dear,
- [kisses her]
- Oscar Wilde: on my way home, I fell among clever people. One cannot go anywhere nowadays without meeting clever people. The thing is becoming an absolute menace. I wish to Heaven there were a few fools left.
- Oscar Wilde: [looks down at his glass] Absinthe- it helps you to see things as you wish they were... then you see them as they're not... finally, you see them as they really are. That's the most horrible thing in the world.
- Oscar Wilde: Pleasure's the only thing worth having a theory about! One must be true to oneself, one's own life. That's the important thing.
- Robert Ross: If one lives one's own life one might have to pay a terrible price for it.
- Oscar Wilde: One's overcharged for everything nowadays.
- Sir Edward Carson: This, Mr. Wilde, is the magazine The Chameleon. You've read the story "The Priest and The Acolyte"?
- Oscar Wilde: Yes.
- Sir Edward Carson: Was not the story that of a scandal about a priest and a boy who served him there at the altar?
- Oscar Wilde: I read the story only once many months ago and nothing would induce me to read it again.
- Sir Edward Carson: You thought it immoral?
- Oscar Wilde: It was worse, it was badly written.
- Lord Alfred Douglas: I thought it kinder to tell her the truth, pure and simple.
- Oscar Wilde: The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- John Sholto Douglas - Marquis of Queensberry: Stop eating those grapes, damn it!
- Lord Alfred Douglas: And they're not very good grapes. Hothouse.
- John Sholto Douglas - Marquis of Queensberry: Yes, like you. White livered, pasty faced. Hothouse grape!
- Lord Alfred Douglas: A grape has neither liver white, nor face pasty.
- John Sholto Douglas - Marquis of Queensberry: You know the whole of London is reeking with this hideous scandal between you and the man Wilde?
- Lord Alfred Douglas: I've no objection to being talked about.
- John Sholto Douglas - Marquis of Queensberry: [shocked disbelief] You've no objection!
- Lord Alfred Douglas: You see, a man who is much talked about is always attractive. One feels there must be something in him after all. However, if you want this scandal, as you call it, to cease, it's really a simple matter. You must simply persuade the gossip merchants to simply stop gossiping.
- John Sholto Douglas - Marquis of Queensberry: You miserable insolent creature. What you want's a good beating!
- Sir Edward Carson: And, so far as Lord Queensbury is concerned, he withdraws nothing. From the beginning to the end, the father has been influenced by one hope alone, that of saving his son, at all risks and hazards to himself. And for that, Mr Oscar Wilde attempts to send the father to gaol, to brand him as a criminal, but as my learned friend has said, we shall see.
- Lord Alfred Douglas: Say what you mean. I dare you to say it.
- John Sholto Douglas - Marquis of Queensberry: I make no charge against you. But to pose as a thing is as bad as to be it. If I catch you with that man again, in a restaurant in a club, on the streets, I'll put my cane to him. If I have to shoot that monster down I shall be justified in protecting my so-called son.