The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed."

"Ah, but you will not always be young, Dorian. Some day you will be old and wrinkled."

"What does it matter what happens to us in this world? I care what happens to the image of myself."

"He was more than a part of his own life. He was a character in which the extremes were reconciled."

"All art is quite useless."

"I wonder what the rest of my life will be. Don't think about the future, Harry. One can think about it afterwards."

"The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

"Believe me, Dorian, it is better to be beautiful than to be good."

"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry. I never know whether you are serious or not."

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

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil."

"I owe a great deal to Harry. Ah, yes, he has been a wonderful friend to me."

"That is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"I can resist everything except temptation, but then again, so can most people."

"No gentleman is ever accidentally rude."

"How tragic it all is! Ugliness and old age!"

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

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

"I wonder if you will ever really love her."

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

"Ah! The love that dare not speak its name."

"Good God! I had almost forgotten. You have explained me to myself, Harry."

"I suppose, Hallward, that when a man has talked for a quarter of an hour, he has said something foolish."

"To define is to limit."

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

"There are moments when history ceases to repeat itself and becomes literature."

"It is what you are that matters, not what you do."

"The body sins once and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification."

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

"I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious."