Portrait Of Dorian Gray Quotes

• How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "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!

  Oscar Wilde

  Eye, June, Giving

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 2 (1891)

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• The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Anger, Reading

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 19 (1891)

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• It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Beauty, Beautiful

  'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1891) ch. 17

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Yield, Law, Sick

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.21, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

  Oscar Wilde

  World Suffering, Gray, Dorian Grey

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.46, Diversion Books

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Strength, Emotional, Use

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.85, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Mistake, Writing

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 4 (1891). A similar quotation occurs inWilde's play LadyWindermere's Fan, act 3 (1892).

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Artist, Feelings, Portraits

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.7, Oxford University Press on Demand

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Humility, Thinking, Want

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.24, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom, or their lack of imagination

  Sydney Smith

  Loyalty, People, Imagination

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• The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Family, Happiness

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.31, First Avenue Editions

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Life, Death

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 3 (1891)

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• There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Evil, Realizing

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.125, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• 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." "I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "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 is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Running, Art

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.17, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ideas, Soul, Want

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.251, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Inspirational, Funny

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.124, Wordsworth Editions

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• 

  Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do.

  Benjamin Spock

  Positive, Family, Trust

  The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care ch. 1 (1946)

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• Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Marriage, Wedding

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.37, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Names, Common Sense

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)”, p.73, Lulu Press, Inc

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• An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Art, Should

  Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (2011). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition”, p.85, Harvard University Press

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• You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

  Oscar Wilde

  Cigarette Smoke, Perfect, Smoking

  'The Picture of Dorian Gray' (1891) ch. 6

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• The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Regret, Mistake, Common Sense

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 3 (1891)

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• The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Halloween, Mirrors, Done

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.66, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sin, Dorian Grey, Commit

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.55, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, New Relationship

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.27, Wordsworth Editions

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