- preface examination: criticism, caliban
- "i have grown to love secrecy. it seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. 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." / "you seem to forget that i am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties."
- "(i know [lady agatha] goes in for giving a rapid precis of all her guests.) i like to find out people for myself. 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."
- 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. it is not merely that i paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. of course, i have done all that. unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is greek. the harmony of soul and body—how much that is! we in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. harry! if you only knew what dorian gray is to me!
- "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. and yet—" - "just turn your head a little more to the right, dorian, like a good boy." - "and yet, i believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—i believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer than the hellenic ideal, it may be. but the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. the mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. we are punished for our refusals. 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. 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. it has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. it is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. you, mr. gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—"
- "always! that is a dreadful word. it makes me shudder when i hear it. those who are so fond of using it 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." - "in that case, let our friendship be a caprice," he murmured, flushing at his own boldness, then stepped up on the platform and resumed his pose.
- lord henry wotton with his strange panegyric on youth, his terrible warning of its brevity. - "you like your art better than your friends. i am no more to you than a green bronze figure. hardly as much, i dare say. (...) yes. i am less to you than your ivory hermes or your silver faun. you will like them always. how long will you like me?" - "he won't like you the better for keeping your promises. he always breaks his own."
- the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing
- margaret devereux made all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow—a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something of that kind
- i fancy that the boy will be well off. he is not of age yet.
- lucrative; entreat; panegyric; he made staccato signs for them to come in
- there was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. no other activity was like it. to project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that—perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
- lord henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner.
- "i asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question—simple curiosity."
- "her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. when i am with her, i regret all that you have taught me. i become different from what you have known me to be. i am changed, and the mere touch of sibyl vane's hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories."
- "when we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy."
- "but, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?" - "yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. i should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich." > 'not being able to afford dissociating; white middle class people's only struggles are mental these days' - "one has to pay in other ways but money."
aug 16 2015 ∞
jan 31 2016 +