The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Original 1890 Edition (A Oscar Wilde Classics)

by Oscar Wilde

You always want to know what one has been doing. I always want to forget what I have been doing.

Things that were dangerous had to be destroyed.

“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”

though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one.

It is said that passion makes one think in a circle.

“As long as one has this stuff, one doesn’t want friends. I think I have had too many friends.”

He knew in what strange heavens they were suffering, and what dull hells were teaching them the secret of some new joy. They were better off than he was.

He was prisoned in thought. Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away.

He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.

“I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.

One’s days were too brief to take the burden of another’s errors on one’s shoulders.

The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed.

In her dealings with man, destiny never close...

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the br...

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words.

The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.”

“From a label there is no escape!

“I give the truths of to-morrow.” “I prefer the mistakes of to-day,”

“You disarm me, Gladys,” he cried, catching the wilfulness of her mood. “Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear.”

“Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues,

“Still, we have done great things.” “Great things have been thrust on us, Gladys.”

“I believe in the race,” she cried. “It represents the survival of the pushing.”

“Love?” “An illusion.”

“Religion?” “The fashionable substitute for belief.”

Scepticism is the beginning of faith.”

“To define is to limit.”

All good hats are made out of nothing.” “Like all good reputations, Gladys,”

“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”

women rule the world. I assure you we can’t bear mediocrities.

We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.”

Romance lives by repetition,

repetition converts an appetite into an art.

Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of ...

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.” “Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?” asked the duchess after a pause. “Especi...

“I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.”

He is very fascinating.” “If he were not, there would be no battle.”

“I am on the side of the Trojans. They fought for a woman.” “They were defeated.” “There are worse things than capture,” she answered.

“You gallop with a loose rein.” “Pace gives life,”

“That a burnt child loves the fire.” “I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.” “You use them for everything, except flight.”

“Describe us as a sex,” was her challenge. “Sphinxes without secrets.”

“Ah! you must suit your frock to his flowers, Gladys.” “That would be a premature surrender.”

“Romantic art begins with its climax.”

“I must keep an opportunity f...

The next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself.

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination.

It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin.

It was the imagination that made each crime bear its...

Success was given to the strong, failure thrus...

Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.