The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

"Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them."
"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," murmured the lad gravely. "They create love in our natures. They have a right to demand it back."

She behaves as if she was beautiful. It is the secret of her charm.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

My heart shall never be put under their microscope.

The way of paradoxes is the way of truth.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Youth is the one thing worth having.... It makes princes of those who have it.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

"I believe in the race," she cried.
"It represents the survival of the pushing."
"It has development."
"Decay fascinates me more."
"What of Art?" she asked.
"It is a malady."
"Love?"
"An illusion."
"Religion?"
"The fashionable substitute for Belief."
"You are a sceptic."
"Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith."
"What are you?"
"To define is to limit."
"Give me a clue."
"Threads snap. You would lose your way in the labyrinth."

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

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 pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed.
In her dealings with man Destiny never closed her accounts.

<...> one of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends.

I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.

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 someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.