Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” Quotes (161 Quotes)

Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life and weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering.

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.

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.

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her 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 dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

The people who have adored me-- there have not been very many, but there have been some-- have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

What are you? To define is to limit.

You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions new thoughts new ideas. I am different but you must not like me less. I am changed but you must always be my friend.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where all intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes al nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression...

I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.

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.

Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.

She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.

What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

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?