I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only, and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.

When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage." and the portrait "in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty." p 349

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.

You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.