"There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him."
"You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."
"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."
"She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain."
"Even things that are true can be proved."
"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."