Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.'A dream of form in days of thought:"

"You told me you had destroyed it."I was wrong. It has destroyed me."

"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."

"He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good."

"because to influence a person is to give one's own soul."

"What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than begin talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"She lives in the poetry she cannot write."

"Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us."

"Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that 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."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

"Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?"

"Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives."

"His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices."

"And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation."

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."

"The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives."

"It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us."

"It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also."

"I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice."