The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

No artist has ethical sympathies.

All art is quite useless.

Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands.

When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them.

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.

When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s ...

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,”