Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Jemanden zu beeinflussen bedeutet, ihm eine fremde Seele zu geben."

"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life."

"But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid"

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

"You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

"It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."

"Even things that are true can be proved."

"You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."

"The only horrible thing in the world is ennui."

"What fire does not destroy, it hardens"

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."