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The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely spoiled that marvellous beauty Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing Harry: Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curios: both are disappointed." Dorian: I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different She is everything to me in life When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them You are more likely to forget me, than I am to forget you To see him is to worship him, to know him is to trust him You are much better than you pretend to be And yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life I become different from what you have known me to be When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy No civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? I love acting. It is so much more real than life A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead? She will never come to life again now The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a dream We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful She had often mimicked death on the stage. Then Death himself had touched her, and taken her with him If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things What is done is done. What is past is past Her death has all the pathetic unselessness of martyrdom, all its wasted beauty To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend. I am what I am. There is nothing more to be said I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words He had never seen him like this before Was the world going to be shown his secret? We have each of us a secret. Let me know yours, and I shall tell you mine I only knew that I had seen perfection face to face, and that the world had become wonderful to my eyes- too wonderful, perhaps, for in such mad worships there is peril, the peril of losing them, no less than the peril of keeping them... Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words Harry spends his days in saying what is incredible, and his evenings in doing what is improbable. Just the sort of life I would like to lead Now it was to hide something that had a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself - something that would breed horrors and yet would never die The love that he bore him - for it was really love - had nothing in it that was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire But it was too late now. 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 real evil I am afraid it is rather heavy, murmured Dorian, as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men No one could see it. He himself would not see it No eye but his would ever see his shame The more he knew, the more he desired to know Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain. Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, but he was unchanged The mere thought made him cold with horror. Surely the world would know his secret then. Perhaps the world already suspected it. Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize? The carnations of the painting had withered, but the eyes were still wonderful in their depth and brilliancy of colour. They seemed to follow him wherever he went Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face He seemed broken with shame and sorrow Each of us has Heaven and Hell in him Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about 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. Life is a great disappointment A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her I like men who have a future, and women who have a past To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away "My wings are untouched" "You use them for everything, except flight The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. I can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true That is the fatality of Faith, and the lesson of Romance The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams The book that the world calles immoral are books that show the world its own shame She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to forece the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on to the balcony. The windowa yieled easily: their bolts werde old. When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as htey had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was Zurück |