The Picture of Dorian Gray

"I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones."

"Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow."

"There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims."

"I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."

"Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the Verities become acrobats, we can judge them."

""I can sympathize with everything except suffering," said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores, the better"."

"The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional."

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different."

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

"“Money, I suppose,” said Lord Fermor, making a wry face. “Well, sit down and tell me all about it. Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.” “Yes,” murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; “and when they grow older they know it. But I don’t want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine.""

"He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time."

"I never talk during music--at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation."

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."

"Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals."

"A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do."

"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect--simply a confession of failure."

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."

"Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride in the park in the morning and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile and their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is! Harry! why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?"

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."

"Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour."

"I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir the dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain."

"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."

"The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

"Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting."

"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes."

"It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves."

"Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a dream had passed across them."

"She was free in her prison of passion."

"Then she paused. A rose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her lips. They trembled. A southern wind of passion swept over her and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him", she said simply."

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."

"To be in love is to surpass one's self."

"Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear Basil."

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."

"The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence."

"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we're all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

"As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it."

"Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy."

"To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others."

"Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality."

"I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich."

"But then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is."

"Nothing is ever quite true."

"Women ... inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out."

"Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating — people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love."

"“I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.” “A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you on it.”"

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."