Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

“Because you have the most marvelous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.”

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.

All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.”

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul.

One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends— those were the fascinating things in life.

What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. 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 one only hides it.

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