So, having finished The Picture of Dorian Gray, I find myself surprised at the number of amazing quotes I found in the book, mostly spoken by the character Lord Henry, whom I found quite interesting.  I don't usually write much in books, but I underlined a lot of really good quotes in Dorian Gray.   Here are my favorites.

"Now, 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 coloured by his wants, his desires, or his prejudices."

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense."

"And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.  It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shadow we call the moon.  It cannot be questioned.  It has its divine right of sovereignty.  It makes princes of those who have it.  You smile?  Ah!  when you have lost it you won't smile...People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial.  That may be so.  But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is.  To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders.  It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.  The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

"I admit that I think it is better to be beautiful than to be good.  But on the other hand no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."

"The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists.  Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.  A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures.  But inferior poets are absolutely facinating.  The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look.  The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistable.  He lives in the poetry he cannot write.  The others write the poetry they dare not realize."

"Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to.  There are only two ways by which man can reach it.  One is by being cultured; the other is by being corrupt."

Lady Narborough hit him with her fan.  "Lord Henry, I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked."
"But what world says that?" asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyeborws.  "It can only be that next world.  This world and I are on excellent terms."
"Everybody I know says you are very wicked," cried the onld lady, shaking her head.
Lord Henry looked serious for some moments.  "It is perfectly monstrous," he said, at last, "the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true."

"Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed."

"Youth!  There is nothing like it.  It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth.  The only people to whose opinions I listen now are people much younger than myself.  They seem in front of me.  Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.  As for the aged, I always contradict the aged.  If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, they solemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high socks, believed in everything, and knew absolutely nothing."

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."

"It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.  They affect us just as vulgarity affects us.  They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.  Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives.  If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect.  Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play.  Or rather we are both.  We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us."

And, of course, the entire preface to the book, which is practically a piece of literature unto itself.

I like aetheticism.  I don't agree with all of it, but I kind of like the idea.  "Art for art's sake" is a belief I've always sort of held.