Molly’s Reviews > The Picture of Dorian Gray > Status Update

‘ “Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
“Even when one has been wounded by it, ...

‘Society— civilized society, at least— is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.’

‘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.’

‘Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.’

‘Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists has, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself...

‘There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.’

‘It is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves.’

‘the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.’

‘A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.’