The Picture of Dorian Grey

by Oscar Wilde

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

think it is rather vain.’

the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body,—how much that

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

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

‘There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,—immoral from the scientific point of view.’

‘Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development.

The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—’

But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself.

‘Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.’