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“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil.
“why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I don’t think I am heartless. Do you?”
And yet I must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded.”
Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life.
The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.
Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It
But really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her death.
“I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated.
The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.
The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away.
Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don’t waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are.”
“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. We cannot spare you.
She had atoned for everything by the sacrifice she had made of her life.
Tears came to his eyes as he remembered her childlike look, and winsome fanciful ways, and shy tremulous grace. He brushed them away hastily and looked again at the picture.
The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all.
This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul.
What did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything.
He drew the screen back into its former place in front of the picture, smiling as he did so,
I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by another.
Don’t talk about horrid subjects. If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened.
“You went to the opera while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me of other women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are horrors in store for that little white body of hers!”
“Stop, Basil! I won’t hear it!” cried Dorian, leaping to his feet. “You must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is past is past.” “You call yesterday the past?”
It is one of the great romantic tragedies of the age. As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious.
She lived her finest tragedy. She was always a heroine.
Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.
“If you try to look at it, Basil, on my word of honour I will never speak to you again as long as I live. I am quite serious. I don’t offer any explanation, and you are not to ask for any. But, remember, if you touch this screen, everything is over between us.”
I only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes—too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them.
As I said to Harry, once, you are made to be worshipped.”
“My dear Basil,” said Dorian, “what have you told me? Simply that you felt that you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment.”
how strange it was that, instead of having been forced to reveal his own secret, he had succeeded, almost by chance, in wresting a secret from his friend!
