Basil Hallward

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them.

You like everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone.

No man came across two ideal things. Few come across one.

I feel that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.

My heart shall never be put under their microscope.

You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.

People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.

I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.

I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.

When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life.

We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

With an evening coat and a white tie... anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilised.