Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray Quotes

Most people are boring and stupid.

I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.

Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.

I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.

the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

It is perfectly monstrous, ' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.

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.

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.

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.

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

He wants to enslave you.''I shudder at the thought of being free.

I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied

She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.

Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins

Inteligence lives longer than beauty.

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

...art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.All art is quite useless.

It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

That is one of the great secrets of life 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.

Life has always poppies in her hands.

Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worse habits.

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?

It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.

I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.

The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.

And, certainly to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.

Utterly, irrevocably, lost

I give the truths of to-morrow.""I prefer the mistakes of today.

That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.

To realise one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.

Lord Henry smiled. "He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

You are not listening to a word I am saying . . . and I am making the most delightful plans for your future.

Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?