“The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.” 

“If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.” 

“If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.” 

“We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. 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. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.” 

“To be popular one must be a mediocrity."

"Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all."

"It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian.” 

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.” 

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. ” 

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.

A good symbol is the best argument, and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.

Friendship is for aid and comfort through all the relations and passages of life and death.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

It is fit for serene days, and graceful gifts, and country rambles, but also for rough roads and hard fare, shipwreck, poverty, and persecution.

We are to dignify to each other the daily needs and offices of man’s life, and embellish it by courage, wisdom and unity.

When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy. 

“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.” 

“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.” 

“Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts.” 

“Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.” 

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

“If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart” 

“Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil, cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.” 

“There is a fatality about good resolutions – that they are always made too late” 

“Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible” 

“Oh I can't explain. 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 marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.” 

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. […] It is content to seek health of body by complying with physical conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

The earth laughs in flowers.

The charming landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some 20 or 30 farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship. 

“Love! What is love? It's nothing. It's just a word. It doesn't exist. Only pleasure is important.” 

“Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "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. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.” 

“Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing character''

“The sky was pure opal now.” 

“Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.” 

“Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.” 

“One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it.” 

“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.” 

“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.