An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.

Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost.

Before Turner there was no fog in London.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Education is very admirable but let us not forget that anything worth knowing cannot be taught.