“the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.” 

“Those who go beneath the surface, do so at their peril.” 

“What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. " A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.” 

“One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.” 

“Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.” 

“What are you?" "To define is to limit.” 

“It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country” 

“What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.” 

“You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself.” 

“I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.” 

“The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grand-pères ont toujours tort.” 

“Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.” 

“The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,

made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.” 

“She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.” 

The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect, seek each to concentrate this radiance of the world on one point, and each in his several work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimulates him to produce.

Nature is methodical, and doeth her work well. Time is never to be hurried.

When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

Love and you shall be loved. 

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

The least defect of self-possession vitiates, in my judgment, the entire relation.

There can never be deep peace between two spirits, never mutual respect until, in their dialogue, each stands for the whole world.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

“Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207” 

“The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.” 

“I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.” 

“Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” 

“He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression...” 

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People people have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself.” 

“People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—” 

“You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.” 

“Not "Forgive us for our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God.” 

“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.” 

The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should.

If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.

There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. 

The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.

All mankind love a lover.

This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, love to complete your life.

Don’t choose the better person, choose the person who makes a better you.

“She lives in the poetry she cannot write.” 

“I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.” 

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” 

“No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself” 

“anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often,”