The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Original 1890 Uncensored Edition + The Expanded and Revised 1891 Edition)

by Oscar Wilde

"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 with it the secret of my own soul."

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. Of course sometimes it is only for a few minutes. But a few minutes with somebody one worships mean a great deal."

"Because I have put into it all the extraordinary romance of which, of course, I have never dared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He will never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry, – too much of myself!"

Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."

The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic."

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

Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person that makes life absolutely lovely to me, and that gives to my art whatever wonder or charm it possesses. Mind, Harry, I trust you."

No wonder Basil Hallward worshipped him. He was made to be worshipped.

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

Good artists give everything to their art, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."

A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past.

Don't be cruel to me because I love you better than anything in the world.

The fresh morning air seemed to drive away all his sombre passions. He thought only of Sibyl Vane. A faint echo of his love came back to him. He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more,--at least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous."

Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the colored image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.

Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation."

There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.

Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself,--something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. 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 be always alive.

wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.

"You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me." "I don't believe it is my picture." "Can't you see your romance in it?" said Dorian, bitterly. "My romance, as you call it . . ." "As you called it." "There was nothing evil in it, nothing shameful. This is the face of a satyr." "It is the face of my soul."

"God! what a thing I must have worshipped! This has the eyes of a devil."