The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of
autobiography.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Preface. |
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books
are well written, or badly written.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Preface. |
All art is quite useless.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Preface. |
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked
about, and that is not being talked about.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry Wotton, to Basil, Chapter 1. |
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry, Chapter 1. |
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love;
it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 1. |
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait
of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident,
the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it
is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 1. |
An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing
of his own life into them.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Artist Basil Hallward, Chapter 1. |
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things
it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous
laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry, Chapter 2. |
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think
you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 2. |
How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful.
But this picture will remain always young. It will never be
older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only
the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and
the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would
give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I
would not give! I would give my soul for that!.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dorian Gray looks at his portrait, Chapter
2. |
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry, Chapter 2. |
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to
be faithless, and cannot.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry, Chapter 2. |
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and
nothing about my old ones.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 3. |
She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do.
It is the secret of their charm.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 3. |
Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing
it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful
portrait. He would seek to dominate him-had already, indeed,
half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There
was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 3. |
I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry at the lunch at Aunt Agatha's,
Chapter 3. |
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original
sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have
been different.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 3. |
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense,
and discover when it is too late that the only things one never
regrets are one's mistakes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry, Chapter 3. |
Punctuality is the thief of time.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 4. |
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value
of nothing.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 4. |
My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative
sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men
represent the triumph of mind over morals.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 4. |
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are
curious: both are disappointed.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Lord Henry explains why he advises Dorian
never to marry, Chapter 4. |
The people who love only once in their lives are really the
shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity,
I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to
the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 4. |
You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm
Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous, I want
the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow
sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into
consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry,
how I worship her!
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dorian Gray, Chapter 4. |
His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon
of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had
much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences;
yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 4. |
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name
men gave to their mistakes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 4. |
Thin-lipped Wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted
at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author
apes the name of common sense. She did not listen. She was free
in her prison of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, was with
her. She had called on Memory to remake him. She had sent her
soul to search for him, and it had brought him back. His kiss
burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm with his
breath.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 5. |
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older
they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 5. |
To be in love is to surpass one's self.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 5. |
Sex
and the City
