Lord Henry Wotton

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

— Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.
— ...and when they grow older they know it.

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.

— Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked.
— But what world says that?... It can only be the next world.

...in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

If one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the world would gain... a fresh impulse of joy...

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love.

"Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them."
"I should have said that whatever they ask for they had first given to us," murmured the lad gravely. "They create love in our natures. They have a right to demand it back."

"I know what pleasure is," cried Dorian Gray. "It is to adore some one."
"That is certainly better than being adored," he answered, toying with some fruits. "Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them."

Youth is the one thing worth having.... It makes princes of those who have it.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.