The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

George Sanders: Lord Henry Wotton

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Quotes 

• Lord Henry Wotton : "If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable."

• Lord Henry Wotton : I apologize for the intelligence of my remarks, Sir Thomas, I'd forgotten that you were a member of Parliament.

• Lord Henry Wotton : I like persons better than principles and persons with no principles better than anything at all.

• Lord Henry Wotton : No civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

• Lord Henry Wotton : correcting the current: "I choose my friends carefully.", with the following: "I always choose my friends for their good looks, and my enemies for their good intellects. Man cannot be too careful in his choice of friends."

• Lord Henry Wotton : There's only one way to get rid of temptation, and that's to yield to it.

• Lord Henry Wotton : What is it that has really happened? Someone has killed herself who loved you. I wish I had had such an experience. The women who have admired me, and there have been some, have always insisted on living long after I've ceased to care for them or them for me.

• Lord Henry Wotton : But adoring someone is certainly better than being adored. Being adored is a nuisance. You'll discover, Dorian, that women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and keep bothering us to do something for them.

• Lord Henry Wotton : I suppose in a fortnight or so, we shall be told he's been seen in San Francisco. It's an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.

• Lord Henry Wotton : One of the great secrets of life. Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

• Sir Thomas : You must admit that women give men the very gold of their lives.

  Lord Henry Wotton : But they invariably want it back in such small change. Women, as a witty Frenchman put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.

• Lord Henry Wotton : I'm analyzing women at present. The subject is less difficult than I was led to believe. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.