Remember to what a point your Puritanism in England has bought you. In old days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbours. Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, every one has to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues-and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins-one after the other. Not a year passes in England without somebody disappearing. Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to man-now they crush him. And yours is a very nasty scandal. You couldn't survive it.
                                                                         An Ideal Husband, Act I.