The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

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.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

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

“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!”

“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.”

“The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,”

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.

And you are awfully unjust, Basil. You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious.

It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for.