The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly.

Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given.

I never talk during music—at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.”

“It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian,”

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.”

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.”

There is something of the martyr about her. Her death has all the pathetic uselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty.

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness.