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“I wish it were fin du globe,” said Dorian with a sigh. “Life is a great disappointment.”
“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”
dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
like a yellow skull.
His soul, certainly, was sick to death.
Innocent blood had been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget,
The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song.
They were what he needed for forgetfulness.
“There goes the devil’s bargain!”
“Prince Charming is what you like to be called, ain’t it?”
They say he has sold himself to the devil for a pretty face.
“That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much.”
“What of art?” she asked. “It is a malady.” “Love?” “An illusion.”
Years ago he was christened Prince Charming.”
“Even when he is wrong?” “Harry is never wrong, Duchess.”
“I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.”
It seemed to him that misfortune followed wherever he went.
“The whole thing is hideous and cruel.
“It is a bad omen, Harry. I feel as if something horrible were going to happen to some of us. To myself, perhaps,”
“I wish I could love,”
“But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has become a burden to me.
have done too many dreadful things in my life. I am not going to do any more.
Basil was really rather dull. He only interested me once, and that was when he told me, years ago, that he had a wild adoration for you and that you were the dominant motive of his art.”
“I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you.
I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.”
I wish I could believe that he had come to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can’t.
I am sorry I sat for it. The memory of the thing is hateful to me.
It used to remind me of those curious lines in some play—Hamlet, I think—how do they run?— “Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart.” Yes: that is what it was like.”
what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose’—how does the quotation run?—‘his own soul?’”
I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not.
The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.”
Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”
“Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm.”
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 ...
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He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy;
that he had been an evil influence to others,
and had experienced a terrible joy...
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Then he loathed his
own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel.
It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his lif...
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Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the
secret that he had been forced to know.
It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him.
Perhaps if his life became pure, he would be able to expel every sign of evil passion from the face. Perhaps the signs of evil had already gone away. He
no change, save that in the eyes there was a look of cunning and in the mouth the curved wrinkle of the hypocrite.
and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled.
Had it been merely vanity that had made him do hi...
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Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
