The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry. "Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry--too much of myself!" "Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view."

"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

"Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

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

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

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures.

The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.

It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.