Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstand, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous, and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.

Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.