Notes: Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde.

Picked it up and read it to see if it was appropriate for Em (my 10 year old). It's not. It's hyper-cynical, jaded and a bit dangerous, and I don't want her to be exposed to it this early. Even though she's read Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies.

But Wilde is king of the epigram.

• The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us. 
• The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. 
• It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. 
• Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners. 
• I can sympathise with everything, except suffering. 
• That is one of the great secrets of life. 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. 
• He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. 
• Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. 
• about the search for beauty being the real secret of life. 
• When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. 
• He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice. People are very fond of giving away what they need most. 
• The real drawback to marriage is that it makes unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.
• A cigarette is the perfect type of the perfect pleasure. It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied. 
• I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
• (they are) old-fashioned people and did not realise that we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. 
• One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. 
• The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
• The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. 
• Society, civilised society at least ... it feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals. 
• Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. 
• I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty. 
• The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
• When a women marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. 
• Moderation is a fatal thing. 
• The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.