Oscar Wilde quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray #4

p67. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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

I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love.

p68. -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.

p37. Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

p11. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

Not "Forgive us our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God.

Romantic art begins with its climax.

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood.

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.

His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfection of its calm. With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on.

The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

I have no terror of death. It is the coming of death that terrifies me.

How fond women are of doing dangerous things! (..) It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

“-I like the duchess very much, but I don't love her." "-And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched.” “-[T]here is never any basis for scandal." "-The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty”

“-It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.” “-One may lose one's way." "-All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys." "-What is that?" "-Disillusion.

[A]nybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

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