“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.”

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”

“people who only love once in their lives are really shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or the lack of imagination. Faithlessness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the intellectual life,—simply a confession of failure.”

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”

“Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”

“What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”

“The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.”