The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions.

A dim sense of having taken part in some strange tragedy came to him once or twice, but there was the unreality of a dream about it.

There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.