The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

One’s own soul, and the passions of one’s friends — those were the fascinating things in life.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us.

I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement.

“To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”

“All I want now is to look at life.

She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions.

“I don’t think I am likely to marry, Henry. I am too much in love.

I fancied a thousand things.

This is merely the beginning.”

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

means you no good.” “Stop,

You are going to a new world, and I have found one.

She was a complete failure.

“She is quite beautiful, Dorian,” he said, “but she can’t act. Let us go.”

It is not good for one’s morals to see bad acting.

“Horribly!” he answered, gazing at her in amazement —“horribly! It was dreadful. Are you ill?

I thought that I was going to be wonderful.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediæval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.

face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them

of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph’s head in gold-thread