The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.

steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. 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.

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

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

“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

“You talk books away,” he said; “why don’t you write one?” “I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine.

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

Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.”