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.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

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

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

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

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls.

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

I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”