“beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich”

“Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.”

“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”

“What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)”

“I like looking at geniuses and listening to beautiful people.”