“Have you not sometimes noted,When we unlock some long-disuséd roomWith heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,Where never foot of man has come for years,And from the windows take the rusty bar,And fling the broken shutters to the air,And let the bright sun in, how the good sunTurns every grimy particle of dustInto a little thing of dancing gold?Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,But you have let love in, and with its goldGilded all life.”

“My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly!You didn't know it then-you know it now.”

“How long could you love a woman who didn't love you, Cecil?A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life!”

“The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirp by the wall, and like a blue thread a long, thin dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was coming.”

“Of course, I should have got rid of you. I should have shaken you out of my life as a man shakes from his raiment a thing that has stung him.”

“We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”

“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.”