The Picture of Dorian Gray (AmazonClassics Edition)
Page: 2, Location: 42
Note: Ch.1
CHAPTER
Page: 12, Location: 243-243
Note: Ch.2
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Page: 28, Location: 552-553
Note: W.
When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older. CHAPTER
Page: 61, Location: 1208-1210
Note: Ch.
But the thing that had been sitting at the table was gone. CHAPTER 15
Page: 130, Location: 2587-2588
Note: Ch.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Page: 1, Location: 29-30
things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Page: 1, Location: 26-27
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Page: 1, Location: 26-27
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal
Page: 1, Location: 24-25
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
Page: 1, Location: 24-25
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.
Page: 1, Location: 36-37
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
Page: 1, Location: 39-40
CHAPTER 1
Page: 2, Location: 42-42
The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
Page: 2, Location: 57-60
there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Page: 3, Location: 64-65
and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.”
Page: 3, Location: 65-66
your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis,
Page: 3, Location: 69-70
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.
Page: 3, Location: 71-71
Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Page: 3, Location: 73-75
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.
Page: 3, Location: 79-81
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.
Page: 3, Location: 81-82
The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?”
Page: 4, Location: 88-90
It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured
Page: 5, Location: 107-108
“every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”
Page: 5, Location: 106-109
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward’s heart beating, and wondered what was coming.
Page: 5, Location: 115-118
I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality.
Page: 6, Location: 135-136
But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or tells one everything about them except what one wants to know.”
Page: 6, Location: 142-144
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one,” said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Page: 7, Location: 148-149
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
Page: 7, Location: 153-154
But I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Page: 7, Location: 160-161
Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices
Page: 8, Location: 168-170
What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.
Page: 8, Location: 176-177
“Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”
Page: 9, Location: 197-198
“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.”
Page: 9, Location: 199-201
Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”
Page: 10, Location: 205-207
and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”
Page: 10, Location: 215-216
dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
Page: 10, Location: 217-218
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”
Page: 10, Location: 217-218
Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.
Page: 10, Location: 224-226
Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.
Page: 11, Location: 230-231
He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him almost against his will.
Page: 11, Location: 241-241
CHAPTER 2
Page: 12, Location: 243-243
Dorian’s whims are laws to everybody, except himself.”
Page: 13, Location: 269-270
He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself.”
Page: 13, Location: 278-279
“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. And yet—”
Page: 14, Location: 283-289
Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret
Page: 14, Location: 296-298
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
Page: 14, Location: 298-299
There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don’t speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think.”
Page: 15, Location: 303-304
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
Page: 16, Location: 334-335
People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. . .
Page: 17, Location: 351-353
and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.
Page: 17, Location: 355-356
“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
Page: 18, Location: 379-381
panegyric
Page: 19, Location: 398-398
“How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”
Page: 20, Location: 409-412
Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.”
Page: 20, Location: 419-420
“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!” The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.
Page: 21, Location: 422-426
“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!”
Page: 21, Location: 422-425
sauntered
Page: 22, Location: 451-451
candour.”
Page: 22, Location: 454-455
“What a fuss people make about fidelity!” exclaimed Lord Henry. “Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”
Page: 23, Location: 466-468
entreat
Page: 23, Location: 472-472
hansom
Page: 24, Location: 480-480
CHAPTER 3
Page: 24, Location: 482-483
indolence,
Page: 24, Location: 487-487
In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn.
Page: 24, Location: 492-494
Lord Henry shook his head. “American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as English women are at concealing their past,” he said, rising to go.
Page: 27, Location: 535-536
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
Page: 27, Location: 542-543
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.”
Page: 27, Location: 546-547
travail,
Page: 28, Location: 553-553
“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered,” said Mr. Erskine; “I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”
Page: 30, Location: 596-597
Lord Henry laughed. “I don’t desire to change anything in England except the weather,”
Page: 31, Location: 623-623
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.”
Page: 31, Location: 627-629
“To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”
Page: 32, Location: 635-635
“Yes,” he continued, “that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
Page: 32, Location: 637-639
CHAPTER 4
Page: 34, Location: 676-676
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.”
Page: 35, Location: 697-698
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Page: 36, Location: 708-709
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
Page: 36, Location: 715-716
aphorisms.
Page: 36, Location: 717-717
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”
Page: 36, Location: 723-724
abstruse
Page: 37, Location: 725-725
As for conversation, there are only five women in London worth talking to, and two of these can’t be admitted into decent society. However, tell me about your genius. How long have you known her?”
Page: 37, Location: 729-730
You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don’t be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.”
Page: 38, Location: 747-750
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure.
Page: 38, Location: 753-753
“Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime, I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.”
Page: 40, Location: 789-790
You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
Page: 42, Location: 834-836
Lord Henry smiled. “People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
Page: 43, Location: 853-855
“Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”
Page: 43, Location: 856-861
There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet, what a great reward one received!
Page: 44, Location: 870-871
He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one’s sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses. Soul and body, body and soul
Page: 44, Location: 882-884
He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one’s sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.
Page: 44, Location: 882-884
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Page: 45, Location: 890-890
CHAPTER 5
Page: 46, Location: 906-907
querulously.
Page: 46, Location: 916-916
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
Page: 48, Location: 960-961
They went out into the flickering, wind-blown sunlight and strolled down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder at the sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl. He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.
Page: 50, Location: 984-987
prattled
Page: 50, Location: 989-989
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
Page: 51, Location: 1007-1007
When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window. Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made in winter, and it is summer now; spring-time for me, I think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies.”
Page: 52, Location: 1024-1026
She remembered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat she said nothing. It was vividly and dramatically expressed. She felt that they would all laugh at it some day.
Page: 55, Location: 1088-1089
CHAPTER 6
Page: 55, Location: 1090-1090
“But I didn’t say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was engaged.”
Page: 56, Location: 1099-1101
“If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is sure to do it, then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
Page: 56, Location: 1102-1104
“Women are wonderfully practical,” murmured Lord Henry, “much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.”
Page: 58, Location: 1155-1157
have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.”
Page: 59, Location: 1160-1161
incorrigible,
Page: 59, Location: 1162-1162
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”
Page: 59, Location: 1171-1172
“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,” he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. “Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s own life—that is the important thing.
Page: 59, Location: 1174-1175
prig
Page: 59, Location: 1176-1176
“Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.”
Page: 60, Location: 1187-1188
“Possibly,” he sighed, “but they invariably want it back in such very small change. That is the worry. Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.”
Page: 60, Location: 1192-1194
CHAPTER 7
Page: 61, Location: 1210-1210
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Page: 64, Location: 1273-1274
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Page: 67, Location: 1328-1329
Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.
Page: 69, Location: 1364-1367
During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture.
Page: 69, Location: 1372-1372
He would not see Lord Henry any more—would not, at any rate, listen to those subtle poisonous theories that in Basil Hallward’s garden had first stirred within him the passion for impossible things.
Page: 70, Location: 1383-1384
CHAPTER 8
Page: 70, Location: 1391-1392
the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all.
Page: 72, Location: 1432-1434
He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain.
Page: 73, Location: 1439-1439
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.
Page: 73, Location: 1439-1440
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.
Page: 73, Location: 1440-1441
Harry, any more—at least not before me. I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”
Page: 73, Location: 1454-1455
It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded.”
Page: 76, Location: 1507-1509
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.” “I
Page: 77, Location: 1519-1520
You are more fortunate than I am. I assure you, Dorian, that not one of the women I have known would have done for me what Sibyl Vane did for you.
Page: 77, Location: 1529-1530
But really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love.”
Page: 77, Location: 1537-1540
Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all.
Page: 80, Location: 1581-1582
Not one blossom of his loveliness would ever fade. Not one pulse of his life would ever weaken. Like the gods of the Greeks, he would be strong, and fleet, and joyous. What did it matter what happened to the coloured image on the canvas? He would be safe. That was everything
Page: 80, Location: 1598-1599
CHAPTER 9
Page: 81, Location: 1602-1603
“What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
Page: 82, Location: 1620-1623
ennui,
Page: 83, Location: 1645-1645
“You spoil my life as an artist by refusing, Dorian. No man comes across two ideal things. Few come across one.”
Page: 88, Location: 1747-1748
panegyrics,
Page: 88, Location: 1754-1754
reticences
Page: 88, Location: 1755-1755
CHAPTER 10
Page: 89, Location: 1758-1759
garrulous
Page: 89, Location: 1773-1774
What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty and eat away its grace. They would defile it and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive.
Page: 90, Location: 1778-1780
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.
Page: 90, Location: 1785-1786
“I didn’t say I liked it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference
Page: 95, Location: 1888-1889
CHAPTER 11
Page: 95, Location: 1890-1891
wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.
Page: 96, Location: 1912-1913
Society—civilized society, at least—is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.
Page: 106, Location: 2116-2117
Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
Page: 109, Location: 2180-2181
CHAPTER 12
Page: 109, Location: 2182-2182
petulant
Page: 110, Location: 2213-2213
don’t wish to know anything about them. I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.”
Page: 111, Location: 2218-2219
profligacies
Page: 112, Location: 2243-2243
The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander.
Page: 112, Location: 2242-2244
My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
Page: 112, Location: 2245-2246
He felt a terrible joy at the thought that some one else was to share his secret, and that the man who had painted the portrait that was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done.
Page: 113, Location: 2271-2273
CHAPTER 13
Page: 114, Location: 2290-2290
I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.”
Page: 117, Location: 2340-2341
The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock’s tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes.
Page: 118, Location: 2360-2361
The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due had gone out of his life. That was enough.
Page: 118, Location: 2367-2368
CHAPTER 14
Page: 120, Location: 2395-2395
His night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain. But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
Page: 120, Location: 2399-2400
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. But this was not one of them. It was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might strangle one itself.
Page: 120, Location: 2406-2409
CHAPTER 15
Page: 130, Location: 2588-2588
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
Page: 131, Location: 2607-2607
one of those middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thoroughly disliked by their friends;
Page: 131, Location: 2610-2611
with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered;
Page: 131, Location: 2614-2614
“It is simply because she remembers you when you were a little girl, Lady Narborough,” said Lord Henry. “She is the one link between us and your short frocks.” “She
Page: 132, Location: 2627-2629
“The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,” said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.
Page: 132, Location: 2641-2642
Lord Henry looked serious for some moments. “It is perfectly monstrous,” he said, at last, “the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.”
Page: 133, Location: 2645-2647
“You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,” broke in Lord Henry. “You were far too happy. When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
Page: 133, Location: 2649-2651
Henry. “A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”
Page: 134, Location: 2666-2667
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.”
Page: 134, Location: 2673-2674
CHAPTER 16
Page: 137, Location: 2728-2729
There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.
Page: 137, Location: 2734-2735
Innocent blood had been spilled. What could atone for that? Ah! for that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget, to stamp the thing out, to crush it as one would crush the adder that had stung one. Indeed, what right had Basil to have spoken to him as he had done? Who had made him a judge over others? He had said things that were dreadful, horrible, not to be endured.
Page: 138, Location: 2739-2742
Dorian shrugged his shoulders. “I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting. Besides, the stuff is better.”
Page: 140, Location: 2790-2791
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination and disobedience its charm. For all sins, as theologians weary not of reminding us, are sins of disobedience. When that high spirit, that morning star of evil, fell from heaven, it was as a rebel that he fell.
Page: 141, Location: 2813-2818
nigh
Page: 143, Location: 2851-2851
CHAPTER 17
Page: 144, Location: 2859-2860
I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
Page: 145, Location: 2883-2885
He shook his head. “Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”
Page: 155, Location: 3053-3054
There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”
Page: 158, Location: 3107-3108
I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations
Page: 160, Location: 3159-3160
Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano. “‘Like the painting of a sorrow,’” he repeated, “‘a face without a heart.’”
Page: 161, Location: 3181-3182
“By the way, Dorian,” he said after a pause, “‘what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose’—how does the quotation run?—‘his own soul?’”
Page: 161, Location: 3183-3184
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
Page: 163, Location: 3206-3207
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
Page: 165, Location: 3262-3263