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

by Oscar Wilde

If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet, – we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the duke's, – we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it, – much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me."

the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.

You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose."

But poor Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know.

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

"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."

An essential catalyst in what’s to come… is Basil ultimately the cause? Or more equal parts Basil, Harry, and Dorian, with Basil moral but obsessive, Harry moral in action but immoral in attitude, and Dorian the compliant narcissistic receptacle for both?

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man, – that is the modern ideal.

Those who are faithful know only the pleasures 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, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

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. If a personality fascinates me, whatever the personality chooses to do is absolutely delightful to me.

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

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals."

"My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect – simply a confession of failure.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

His great wealth was a certain element of security. Society – civilised society, at least – is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

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.

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.