Dorian Gray

I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness?
I have searched for pleasure.

— I give the truths of to-morrow.
— I prefer the mistakes of to-day.

My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy.

— Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. I hate it.
— Why?
— Because, one can survive everything nowadays except that.

Ah, what is impossible?

I wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you.

To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life.

Let this be a warning to you not to take vengeance into your own hands.

I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said.

“You must admit, Harry, that women give to men the very gold of their lives.”
“Possibly,” he sighed, “but they invariably want it back in such very small change.”

I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more—at least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

...wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, or aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul.

"Harry! Sibyl Vane is sacred!"
"It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian."