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

by Oscar Wilde

The harmony of soul and body—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.

Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.... A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

“How badly I acted to-night, Dorian!” she cried. “Horribly!” he answered, gazing at her in amazement. “Horribly! It was dreadful. Are you ill? You have no idea what it was. You have no idea what I suffered.”

It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face. It cannot be concealed.

‘Lead us not into temptation. Forgive us our sins. Wash away our iniquities.’ Let us say that together. The prayer of your pride has been answered. The prayer of your repentance will be answered also. I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.”

“It is never too late, Dorian. Let us kneel down and try if we cannot remember a prayer. Isn’t there a verse somewhere, ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, yet I will make them as white as snow’?”

If we women did not love you for your defects, where would you all be?

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak.

“By the way, Dorian,” he said after a pause, “‘what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose—how does the quotation run?—his own soul’?”

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.