But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.
But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.
He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.
I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty.
Love! What is love? It's nothing. It's just a word. It doesn't exist. Only pleasure is important.
She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost.
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
What fire does not destroy, it hardens
You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?
But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything.
Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with yourrose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame…
Man is many things, but he is not rational.
She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.
The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.
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, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous, I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country
Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
Those who go beneath the surface, do so at their peril.
When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.
Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks.
A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face!
Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself do not interest me. The have not got the charm of novelty.
It is simply expression as Harry says that gives reality to things.
Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.
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.
The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.
Your rank and wealth, Harry; 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.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
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
I am happy in my prison of passion
I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words
It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.
Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry. Except in America, rejoined Lord Henry, languidly.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.
Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories