The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

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.”

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

“that is one of the great secrets of life—to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”

“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.” “I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.” “No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly.

Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age.

When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

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.