More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one,”
“You don’t understand what friendship is, Harry,” he murmured—“or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
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.
how delightful other people’s emotions were!—much more delightful than their ideas,
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.
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
youth is the one thing worth having.”
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.
“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching,
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others.
“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
every experience is of value,
no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”
the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
I might mimic a passion that I do not feel, but I cannot mimic one that burns me like fire.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.
I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”
If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened.
art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.”
In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him.
we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
“It is perfectly monstrous,” he said, at last, “the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.”
When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.”
“Life is a great disappointment.”
I always want to forget what I have been doing.
He wanted to escape from himself.
We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.”
each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion.
sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself.
In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded.
Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak.
