The Picture of Dorian Gray

"I am afraid that there are moments when I cannot bear the mystery of your soul."

"The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

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

"One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age."

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

"I hope I shall always be like that."

"How sad it is that one has to conceal all the fascinating things one thinks."

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things."

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

"I wish I could love as you do, Henry."

"To define is to limit."

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

"I can resist everything except temptation."

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

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

"I have always been my own master; let that be my epitaph."

"Humanity takes itself so seriously. It is the one thing that makes us ridiculous."

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies."

"Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face."

"I don't think I like being at the mercy of the gods anymore."

"The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else."

"If I could get back my youth, I would be quite content to give up everything else."

"You remind me of a wonderful work of art."

"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

"I wonder what the rest of the world gets. I hope they get something better than a caricature of beauty."

"Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence."

"All trials are trials for one's life."

"The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."