The Picture of Doran Gray Quotes

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

“Why?”

“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. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for 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. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Dorian from the first moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memoryhaunts an artist like an exsquisite dream. I worshipped you, I grew jealous of everyone to whom ypu spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present in my art.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray

“You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less as you want to know.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play—I tell you Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. [...] There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Somos punidos pelas nossas recusas. Todo impulso que lutamos para asfixiar persiste na mente e nos envenena. O corpo peca uma vez, e dá conta do pecado, pois a ação é uma forma de purificação. Nada perdura a não ser a lembrança do prazer, ou a luxúria do arrependimento. A única maneira de nos livrarmos de uma tentação é ceder a ela. Resista e a alma adoecerá de saudades de coisas que ela se proibiu, pelo desejo que suas leis monstruosas tornaram monstruoso e ilegal. Dizem que os grandes acontecimentos do mundo têm lugar no cérebro. É também no cérebro, e no cérebro apenas, que os grandes pecados do mundo têm lugar.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Todo retrato pintado com sentimento é um retrato do artista, não do modelo. O modelo é apenas acidental, o pretexto. Não é ele que o pintor revela; é na verdade o artista que, na tela colorida, se revela.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one's own race, mearer perhaps in type and temperament”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Die Tragödie des Alters besteht nicht darin, dass man alt ist, sondern dass man sich jung fühlt.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them.

"اوه، نمی‌توانم توضیح دهم. وقتی از کسی بی‌اندازه خوشم می‌آید، هرگز نام او را به کسی نمی‌گویم. این کار درست مثل تسلیم کردن بخشی از وجود اوست.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. 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. They live as we all should live— undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands.

"در هر امتیاز جسمانی و ذهنی شومی نهفته است، از همان شومی‌هایی که گویی قدم‌های لرزان پادشاهان را در سراسر تاریخ دنبال کرده است. بهتر است با بقیه فرق نداشته باشی. در این دنیا، زشت‌ها و ابله‌ها هستند که سود می‌برند. می‌توانند آسوده بنشینند و به نمایش خیره شوند. اگر از پیروزی بی‌خبر بمانند، دست کم از خبر شکست مصون می‌مانند. همان‌طور زندگی می‌کنند که همۀ ما باید زندگی کنیم: آسوده‌خاطر، بی‌تفاوت و بی‌دغدغه. نه بر دیگران تباهی نازل می‌کنند و نه هرگز تباهی از دست بیگانگان می‌پذیرند.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit it. I
have put too much of myself into it."

«می‌دانم که به من خواهید خندید،» او پاسخ داد، «اما من واقعاً نمی‌توانم آن را به نمایش بگذارم. بیش از اندازه از خودم را در آن گنجانده‌ام.»”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“of course you have an intellectual expression and all that. 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. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are!


"البته که شما یک حالت هوشمندانه دارید و همۀ این‌ها. اما زیبایی، زیبایی واقعی، دقیقاً جایی تمام می‌شود که هوشمندی آغاز می‌گردد.

هوشمندی در ذات خود، نوعی اغراق است و هماهنگی صورت را از بین می‌برد. لحظه‌ای که کسی برای فکر کردن می‌نشیند، تمام وجودش تبدیل به بینی، یا تماماً پیشانی می‌شود، یا چیزهای زننده‌ای از این قبیل. به مردان موفق در هر یک از مشاغل فکری نگاه کنید. چه‌قدر کاملاً نازیبا و نفرت‌انگیزند!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“What have you told me? Simply that you felt you admired me too much. That is not even a compliment.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“I wish I could love" cried Dorian Gray with a deep note of pathos in his voice. "But I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the desire. I am too much concentrated on myself. My own personality has become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget [...].”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Who are you?" "To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Bilgi ölümdür. İnsanı cezbeden kesinsizliktir. Bir sis bulutu her şeyi mükemmel hale getirir.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“How often do you see him?'
'Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is absolutely necessary to me.'
'How extraordinary! I though you would never care for anything but your art.'
'He is all my art to me now.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“I gave it to you before it existed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. 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. They live as we all should live--undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“He puesto demasiado de mí mismo en esa obra.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“But he never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system, or of mistaking, for a house in which to live, an inn that is but suitable for the sojourn of a night, or for a few hours of a night in which there are no stars and the moon is in travail.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray

“You went to the opera?” said Hallward, speaking very slowly and with a strained touch of pain in his voice. “You went to the opera while Sibyl Vane was lying dead in some sordid lodging? You can talk to me of other women being charming, and of Patti singing divinely, before the girl you loved has even the quiet of a grave to sleep in? Why, man, there are horrors in store for that little white body of hers!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Love is a more wonderful thing than Art”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“Romanticists! You have all the methods of science.'
'Men have educated us.'
'But not explained you.'
'Describe us as a sex, was her challenge.
'Sphinxes without secrets.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray

“Nadie encuentra en la vida dos seres ideales. Pocos llegan a dar con uno solo.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“En el mundo solo hay una cosa peor que ser comidilla de la gente, y es no serlo.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray

“Ima grijeha čija očaravajuća draž dolazi jače od izraza u sjećanju nego u samom sagrešenju, Ima neobičnih pobjedničkih slavlja koja više gode ponosu nego strasti, slavlja koja duhu pružaju veću nasladu od bilo koje što su nam pružila ili će nam ikad moći pružiti naša čula.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray

“Uistinu, Basile, savjest i kukavština zapravo su jedno te isto. Savjest je samo ime pod kojim je ta tvrtka ubilježena u trgovački registar. I ništa drugo.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray