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. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago.