“Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.”

“I believe that you are really a very good husband but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”

“My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.”

“I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them.' 'Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.""I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”

“My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth; I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.”

“Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”