The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.

and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”