“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”
Work
**The Picture of Dorian Gray** is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical *Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine*. The novel-length version was published in April 1891. (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray))
Quotes
Showing 25-45 of 45
Oscar Wilde
Canonical work source
“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”
“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.”
“You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”
“We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly ho...”
“So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a...”
“What fire does not destroy, it hardens”
“The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are....”
“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.”
“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”
“But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world...”
“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.”
“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.”
“You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
“I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses o...”
“The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. The...”
“I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.”
“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.”
“Я верю в величие нации. — Оно только пережиток предприимчивости и напористости. — В нём залог развития. — Упадок мне милее. — А как же искусство? — Оно — болезнь. — А любовь? — Иллюзия. — А...”
“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of th...”