One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 8. Lord Henry comforts Dorian after the suicide of his lover Sibyl. Henry bemoans the tendency for former female lovers to "go in at once for reminiscences. That awful memory of woman! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals." Then Henry goes on to say the words quoted above. What Henry is advising is that Sibyl’s death is irrelevant and Dorian shouldn’t think about it as it will only impede him in his goals.