Dorian Gray Corruption Quotes

Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow…There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 3. Lord Henry reflects on how fascinating it is to influence Dorian, whom he admits playing like an "exquisite violin." What appears to be a growing friendship between Henry and Dorian is nothing more than an exercise by Henry in the corruption of innocence – Henry is bent on projecting his hedonistic soul into Dorian and turning the impressionable young man into an unremitting follower of pleasure.

I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me. I fancied a thousand things. The mere danger gave me a sense of delight…I don’t know what I expected, but I went out and wandered eastward, soon losing my way in a labyrinth of grimy streets and black grassless squares.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 4. London was the largest and most powerful city in the world in the 19th century, when the story takes place. The moral degeneration of the city and the ambivalent attitude of Victorians towards their capital’s decadence is reflected in Dorian’s description to Lord Henry of his stroll through the East End. The city’s East End with its "sordid sinners" and its "splendid sins" is like another character in the novel, its corruption represents the corruption that will soon be Dorian’s.

"To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self," he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s own life – that is the important thing. As for the lives of one’s neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan, one can flaunt one’s moral views about them, but they are not one’s concern. Besides, Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality."
"But, surely, if one lives merely for one’s self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich."

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 6. Lord Henry makes this response when asked by Basil and Dorian what did he mean by good. Henry preaches the gospel of individualism, dismisses self-denial as something for the poor, rejects modern morality and says that beautiful sins are the privilege of the wealthy. He continues his efforts to weave his corruptive web of influence over Dorian, who just before this criticized Henry’s "poisonous" theories. The very moral Basil suggests that a person will pay a terrible price for living a completely selfish life.

You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. Dorian cruelly and brutally casts Sibyl aside in this hurtful, humiliating rant to her backstage after her imperfect performance as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, to which Dorian invited Basil and Lord Henry. Yet only the day before he provessed that he loved Sibyl and wanted to place her on a pedestal of gold. Dorian is showing signs of the kind of shallowness that his mentor Lord Henry is famous for – though ironically Dorian calls Sibyl shallow. This is the critical moment where we witness the start of the corruption of Dorian’s soul, a sign of the effect the malign influence of Lord Henry is having.

Where he went to he hardly knew. He remembered wandering through dimly lit streets, past gaunt, black-shadowed archways and evil-looking houses. Women with hoarse voices and harsh laughter had called after him. Drunkards had reeled by, cursing and chattering to themselves like monstrous apes. He had seen grotesque children huddled upon door-steps, and heard shrieks and oaths from gloomy courts.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. When Dorian ferociously rejects Sibyl’s affections, he sinks back into the gloomy and oppressive streets of London. Vivid metaphoric word combinations and simile are used with powerful effect to convey the fearful, threatening and evil Gothic atmosphere of the city with its "monstrous" people. The dark side of London with its "black-shadowed archways" and "grotesque children" and "gloomy courts" mirrors Dorian’s own descent into darkness. His destruction of Sibyl has set him on the path to corruption.

Finally he came back, went over to the picture, and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-coloured silk blinds, the face appeared to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly strange.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. Following his brutal dismissal of Sibyl, Dorian examines his portait and is startled by a change in it: in the mouth there is an expression of cruelty. The portrait has become a moral metaphor of Dorian. As his soul embraces evil and corruption, so the painting will bear the burden of his growing ugliness. It has taken on a life of its own and will become both Dorian’s curse and his doppelganger. What started out seemingly as a novel of manners becomes a true Gothic novel.

The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. Dorian is looking at the portrait Basil painted of him and how it is changing after he breaks Sibyl’s heart – there are lines of cruelty around the mouth. A very effective simile is used to compare the painting to a mirror of himself after he had committed a terrible wrong. The painting fulfils the role of the Gothic supernatural element in Wilde’s novel.

Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward’s studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. As a change in the portrait reflects his recent ugly behavior towards Sibyl, Dorian realizes that the painting is a window to his soul and will mirror who he really is inside, while outwardly he would preserve his youthful beauty. He recalls the "mad wish" he made the day Basil finished the picture, that he would remain young and the portrait grow old. His wish had been fulfilled!

Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin that he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness. But he would not sin. The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience. He would resist temptation. He would not see Lord Henry any more – would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward’s garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things. He would go back to Sibyl Vane, make her amends, marry her, try to love her again. Yes, it was his duty to do so. She must have suffered more than he had. Poor child! He had been selfish and cruel to her. The fascination that she had exercised over him would return. They would be happy together. His life with her would be beautiful and pure.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. Dorian looks at his portrait, its beautiful face altered and marred with a look of cruelty. This passage represents Dorian’s loss of innocence and beginning of the moral deterioration of his soul. Sibyl has killed herself because of his brutal rejection of her, though he is not yet aware of her demise. This is another turning point in the story, as Dorian is filled with remorse about his cruelty and selfishness to her. He vows to be pure, reject sin, marry Sibyl and love her again. But this change in Dorian’s character turns out to be superficial. The influence of Lord Henry’s theories, which Dorian promises to resist in reaction to the ugliness of the portrait, will prove too much.

His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 8. Dorian reflects on his "unreal and selfish love" for Sibyl and hopes that it will be transformed into something nobler. He would do this with the help of the portrait, a visible symbol of his corruption, which would be his conscience and he would use to guide him through life. As the battle for his soul between good and evil continues, he appears to find his moral compass and vows to follow the noble path. He does not yet know about Sibyl’s suicide.

As soon as he had left, he rushed to the screen and drew it back. No; there was no further change in the picture. It had received the news of Sibyl Vane’s death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul? He wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 8. After Lord Henry leaves, Dorian goes to check the portrait again. He finds there is no further change since he learned the news of Sibyl’s death. He thinks that the portrait received the news of the death before he had known it and the vicious cruelty on the mouth had appeared when Sibyl drank the poison. Dorian is fascinated and hopes to see any further change in the picture take place before his eyes.

Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins – he was to have all these
things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 8. After Dorian cruelly and coldly turns his back on Sibyl which results in her suicide, Basil’s portait of him changes and a look of vicious cruelty mars the lines of the mouth. He understands right away what this means for him – the portrait will serve as a metaphor for the state of his soul and conscience. The more corrupt these become the more the picture will portray Dorian’s moral decay and ugliness.

For there would be a real pleasure in watching it. He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places. This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. And when winter came upon it, he would still be standing where spring trembles on the verge of summer. When the blood crept from its face, and left behind a pallid mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he would keep the glamour of boyhood. Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life would ever weaken.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 8. Dorian is now comfortable with the fact that he will be eternally young, despite having traded his soul for it. So he will take pleasure in watching the changing portrait, a magical mirror that will show him his own soul. When the face in the picture crumbles into a bloodless mask of chalk with leaden eyes, he will enjoy the beauty of youth. His portrait has turned into something supernatural, a picture of his changing soul. At this stage Dorian is the complete narcissist.

I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again. There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 9. Dorian won’t let Basil see the portrait and tells him he won’t sit to him again. After Sibyl’s death, when a blemish appears on the painting to mark Dorian’s sin of cruelty to her, he decides to hide the picture from public view. There is a noticeable change in Dorian’s mood here as he begins to consider his own mortality and he is frightened by it. He believes that the changed painting reflects his flawed soul – the Gothic magical portrait has developed a life of its own!

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. They would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would always be alive.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 10. Dorian uses the metaphor of worms on a corpse to describe how his sins would mar the beauty of his portrait painted by Basil and reflect the corruption of his soul. There is strong Gothic symbolism in the description of the "alive" portrait of his soul. He arranges for the picture with its "face on the canvas viler than before" to be covered over, taken to an attic room and hidden from view "from prying eyes."

Every moment of his lonely childhood came back to him as he looked round. He recalled the stainless purity of his boyish life, and it seemed horrible to him that it was here the fatal portrait was to be hidden away. How little he had thought, in those dead days, of all that was in store for him!

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 10. Dorian has flashbacks to the innocence of his childhood when he enters the attic schoolroom. It is here that he locks away the portrait. The room was first used as a playroom when he was a child and then as a study when he grew older. He is somewhat disturbed that the rotting portrait is to be stored here among his childhood memories, but he decides that there is no other place in the house so secure from "prying eyes."

Beneath its purple pall, the face painted on the canvas could grow bestial, sodden, and unclean. What did it matter? No one could see it. He himself would not see it. Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul? He kept his youth – that was enough. And, besides, might not his nature grow finer, after all? There was no reason that the future should be so full of shame. Some love might come across his life, and purify him, and shield him from those sins that seemed to be already stirring in spirit and in flesh – those curious unpictured sins whose very mystery lent them their subtlety and their charm.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 10. Concealed by its purple cover in the locked attic, Dorian knows that his portrait will continue to corrupt and show the erosion of his soul. Why should he watch it, he asks himself? He keeps the full bloom of his youth and that is enough for him. He holds out hope that some day love might enter his life to purge and protect him from the future sins stirring up inside him. But at this point redemption seems a forelorn hope for Dorian, who confesses his that he is attracted by the "charm" of this life of sin.

Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old. It might escape the hideousness of sin, but the hideousness of age was in store for it. The cheeks would become hollow or flaccid. Yellow crow’s feet would creep round the fading eyes and make them horrible. The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold, blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood. The picture had to be concealed. There was no help for it.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 10. While Dorian may escape the clutches of the law and society for his crimes and sins, he knows that there is no hiding place from the portrait for his festering soul. He will appear eternally young, but every wrongdoing will be etched on the evil face of the aging, decaying portrait. The painted Dorian will grow hideous and wrinkled and twisted, a symbol of his mortality, and must be hidden.

One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and the creeping shadows.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 10. Dorian is greatly taken with a novel about a young Parisian man who indulges himself in all kinds of passions. The lines between virtue and sin are blurred in the poisonous yellow book, which was given to him as a gift by Lord Henry. Wilde uses metaphorical language to compare the book to a drug and to highlight the influence it and Lord Henry have on the young man. The quote continues with the use of musical metaphor, suggesting that the book is having its desired effect of corrupting Dorian.

He procured from Paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 11. The yellow book becomes like sacred scripture to Dorian, who buys multiple copies of it and has them found in various colors to suit his different moods. The book’s profound corrupting influence is evident in Dorian’s admission that he has almost entirely lost control of his nature.

He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world. Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room. There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished. They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and sensual.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 11. As the years pass Dorian is the target of "strange rumours about his mode of life" and "the most evil things" being said against him. But his appearance of eternal youth protects him from the scandalous talk, because when people see him they cannot believe he would do anything dishonourable. People wonder how he could have escaped the sordidness and sensuality of his age – this is somewhat ironic because Dorian doesn’t escape it, it’s just that his corruption doesn’t show in his face, but in the portrait in his attic!

He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy, sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 11. Often Dorian would visit his portrait in the locked attic, stand with a mirror in his hand and look at the evil and aging face in the painting, and then at the beautiful young face smiling back at him from the mirror. His vanity in his ageless beauty continues to grow, and he takes delight in watching his portrait become old instead of him and reflect his sins and decaying soul.

Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 11. Lord Henry has succeeded in corrupting the once innocent Dorian through the pages of the yellow book that he gifted him. The book has become Dorian’s bible and he reads his favorite passages detailing acts of violence, seductions and poisonings, over and over again. To Dorian the beautiful is now best experienced through evil.

The room looked as if it had not been lived in for years. A faded Flemish tapestry, a curtained picture, an old Italian cassone, and an almost empty bookcase – that was all that it seemed to contain, besides a chair and a table…the whole place was covered with dust, and that the carpet was in holes. A mouse ran scuffling behind the wainscoting. There was a damp odour of mildew. As Dorian Gray was lighting a half-burned candle that was standing on the mantelshelf, he saw that the whole place was covered with dust and that the carpet was in holes.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 13. Basil enters the secret delapidated attic room where Dorian has the portrait locked away. There is a strong sense of the Gothic in the description of the room, which hasn’t been used for years and is in a state of decay. It symbolizes the dark part of Dorian’s soul.

An exclamation of horror broke from the painter’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust and loathing…he felt as if his blood had changed in a moment from fire to sluggish ice.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 13. When Dorian flings the cover off the portrait hidden in the attic, Basil lets out a cry of horror at the sight of the hideous face of Dorian on the canvass. The painting has changed, reflecting Dorian’s corrupted soul. Basil’s imminent murder at the hands of a morally destitute Dorian – as reflected by the portrait – is also foreshadowed when Basil’s blood changes "from fire to sluggish ice."
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