Lord Henry Wotton

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

"I can resist everything except temptation."

"To define is to limit."

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

"What is past is of no consequence. The present is what matters."

"I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy."

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

"Beauty is a form of genius–is higher, indeed, than genius."

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws."

"Ah, but what a wonderful life you have had! Your meeting with Miss Sibil Vane was fate."

"The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself."

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

"If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened."

"Conscience is a handicap, not a guide."

"The secret to remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming."

"One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry."

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world."

"Passion makes one think in a circle."

"The worst vice is advice."

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

"Youth! There is nothing like it."

"The only tragedy in life is to grow old."

"Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes."

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others."

"Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress."

"Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect."

"If a man needs an excuse for loving anyone, he has not much claim to love at all."

"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."