The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Each man lived his own life, and paid his own price for living it.

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

And how delightful other people's emotions were!—much more delightful than their ideas.

Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing....

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. 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.

Don't tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that one knows that Life has exhausted him.

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do any thing that one cannot talk about after dinner.

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

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never has the courage to commit.

Anything would be better than this dreadful state of doubt.

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one`s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.