Портрет Дориана Грея

Anything would be better than this dreadful state of doubt.

we live in an age when only unnecessary things are absolutely necessary to us

It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?

Besides, women were better suit- ed to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes.

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

How little you can know of love, if you say it mars your art!

You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity.

I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire.

if she knows as little about life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience.

It is not good for one’s morals to see bad acting.

Love is a more wonderful thing than art.’
‘They are both simply forms of imitation,’

If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.

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

I wish to place her on a pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine.

I cannot understand how any one can wish to shame what he loves.

I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women, except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.

Women are wonderfully practical

no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested

The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colorless. 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.

The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish.