The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

All art is quite useless. OSCAR WILDE

The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse.

there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

"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 reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul."

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one,"

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

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

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,

"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."

You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. 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....

how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last--such a little time.

Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything."

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm."

"Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different."

"To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."

"that is one of the great secrets of life. 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."

Lord Henry had not yet come in. He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

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

"Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

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

"Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about," he answered in his slow melodious voice. "But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy."

Love is a more wonderful thing than art."

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.

"Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do." "But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What then?" "Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things.

"You must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is past is past." "You call yesterday the past?" "What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."

I suffered immensely. Then it passed away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

mind you don't talk about anything serious. Nothing is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be."

"I don't wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty."

youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.

When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."

"Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

"What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast."

"I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.

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. That was all.

how terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep!

"How fond women are of doing dangerous things!" laughed Lord Henry. "It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."

"Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."