The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.

You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.”

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

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.

“There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.”

“Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”

Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly. . . . Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days,

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

“I adore simple pleasures,” said Lord Henry. “They are the last refuge of the complex.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

“I can sympathize with everything except suffering,” said Lord Henry, shrugging his shoulders. “I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life.

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.”

“All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.”

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

To be in love is to surpass one’s self.

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

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.

Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.

“You told me you had destroyed it.” “I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”

“Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,”

She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences.”

“To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul!”

“Decay fascinates me more.” “What of art?” she asked. “It is a malady.” “Love?” “An illusion.”

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”

Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”

“I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.”

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.

I have no terror of death. It is the coming of death that terrifies me.

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.”