The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

“every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.

The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

“What a fuss people make about fidelity,” murmured Lord Henry. “And after all, it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. It is either an unfortunate accident, or an unpleasant result of temperament. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.