All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June… . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind.

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