"To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear."

"The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster."

"My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep."

"The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic."

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

"Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. 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. That was all."

"One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends."

"So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets..."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever."

"If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbroker's do that, and then merely at dinner parties."

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally."

"His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices."

"To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture."

"And how delightful other people's emotions were!-much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends-those were the fascinating things in life."

"To be on the alert is to live to be lulled into security is to die."

"I'm too old to know everything."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

"Every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is always Judas who writes the biography."

"And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."

"You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity."

"Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."

"After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears."

"A country where the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."

"One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything."

"Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul."

"The ugly and 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 never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly."

"There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose."

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain."

"It is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg."

"Most people are boring and stupid."

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."

"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself."

"There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance."

"The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is."

"Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us."

"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."

"What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than begin talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"You are perfectly right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."

"Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more."

"The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated."

"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others."

"Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben."

"Charity creates a multitude of sins."

"An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends."

"No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."

"To be popular one must be a mediocrity.""Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.""It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian."