There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.

You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is.

I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.