I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.

The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.

It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.

And once, or twice, to throw the dice is a gentlemanly game, But he does not win who plays with Sin in the secret house of shame

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope.