The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Original 1890 Edition (A Oscar Wilde Classics)

by Oscar Wilde

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, “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.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows.

One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends—those were the fascinating things in life.

Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.

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 shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned.

In the slanting beams that streamed through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy scent of the roses seemed to brood over everything.

When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”

“I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry.” “Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing.

“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”