Just read “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”. One of the most fascinating books and it’s full of wonderful quotes. And it’s a dangerous book as well..
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.”
“All art is quite useless”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
“You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
“Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”
“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm”
“I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.”
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
“Punctuality is the thief of time.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”
“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
“The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect – simply a confession of failure.”
“Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
“To be in love is to surpass one’s self.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful.”
“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.”
“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
“Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.”
“To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
“A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.”
“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
- Oscar Wilde
