Dorian Grey Quotes

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June… . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

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.

I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.

People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom, or their lack of imagination

Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures.

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

The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

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.

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

'The Portrait of Dorian Grey' beautifully articulates how the altruistic part of ourselves clashes with our essentially narcissistic state.

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 one want?

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.

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.

Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

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.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.