The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music."

"I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"I hope you will always think of me as a friend."

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

"Youth is the only thing worth having."

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence of that world is a form of a mockery."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

"It is what you are that matters, not what you look like."

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects."

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

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

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

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

"I can resist everything except temptation."

"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know."

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

"There is no such thing as a good influence. All influence is immoral."

"When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to anyone."

"I wonder what the rest of your life will be."

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

"What are you talking about? I haven't got a conscience."

"I love my country, but I love my honor more."

"I don't regret my past. I am not ashamed of it."

"The value of art lies in the fact that it teaches us to see the world as we wish."

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

"I have always been my own master; had at least always been so till I met you."

"To make oneself perfect is the aim of us all."