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A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
“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.
Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don’t know which to follow.
“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,” said Lord Henry,
“To-night she is Imogen,” he answered, “and to-morrow night she will be Juliet.” “When is she Sibyl Vane?” “Never.”
She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual.
He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray’s soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation.
There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade.
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest.
Besides, what do you know of this young man? You don’t even know his name. The whole thing is most inconvenient,
He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.
When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.
“To see him is to worship him; to know him is to trust him.”
believe me that if this man wrongs my sister, I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog. I swear it.”
“Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry.” “Except in America,” rejoined Lord Henry
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience.
I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study.”
“The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.”
I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.”
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.”
I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.”
“They create love in our natures. They have a right to demand it back.”
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. Life had come between them.
It was simply bad art. She was a complete failure.
“Don’t talk like that about any one you love, Dorian. Love is a more wonderful thing than art.” “They are both simply forms of imitation,” remarked Lord Henry.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
“Why I was so bad to-night. Why I shall always be bad. Why I shall never act well again.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You are ill, I suppose. When you are ill you shouldn’t act. You make yourself ridiculous. My friends were bored. I was bored.”
My love! My love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be.
Oh, Dorian, Dorian, you understand now what it signifies? Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that.”
Then he leaped up and went to the door. “Yes,” he cried, “you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. You
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“I don’t wish to be unkind, but I can’t see you again. You have disappointed me.”
The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
But he had suffered also. During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His life was well worth hers.
She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an age.
Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes. Lord Henry had told him that, and Lord Henry knew what women ...
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The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience.
He thought only of Sibyl. 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.
Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what that soul thought, they realized?—that what it dreamed, they made true? Or was there some other, more terrible reason?
His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all.
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.
I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”
“A very charming artistic basis for ethics, Dorian! I congratulate you on it. But how are you going to begin?” “By marrying Sibyl Vane.”
“murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere, I suppose, afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic life is!
If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have wept over it.
Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl.
She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of her.”
“the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. If you had married this girl, you would have been wretched.
