The Picture of Dorian Gray

"The capacity for hope is the most human of all qualities."

"Do you really believe that it is weakness that yields to temptation?"

"It is the world that makes use of you, not you that make use of the world."

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

"There are moments when the simple things of life are what we want most."

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

"Self-control is the strength. When you can command yourself, you command the world."

"You remind me of a wonderful sonnet, but I cannot remember whose."

"I am afraid of him. There is something in the shape of his fingers that I hate."

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

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain."

"I wish I could love as you do. But when I have loved I have been betrayed."

"It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of the world."

"The more you own, the more it owns you."

"An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them."

"My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite that flexible."

"I can forgive Mr. Dorian Gray for painting a bad picture, but I cannot forgive him for painting a picture that is not bad enough."

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins."

"The mysteries of life are the colorless unities of which existence is composed."

"To define is to limit."

"What is past is past. What one has to deal with is the present."

"I am dying of ennui."

"The world will always laugh at those who try to be clever."

"You cut life to pieces with your epigrams."

"Emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art."

"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others."

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

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

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

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