Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray. [A Novel.]

Bianca Miller 

The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic"

 "Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case, and began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and self-satisfied air, as if he had summed up life in a phrase. 

 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, 

"that is one of the great secrets secrets of life-to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creature. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know:"

Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were con- scious. It often happened that when we thought we were experi- menting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves 

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 under stand their nature. And yet what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole world became to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and the emotional coloured life of the intellect: to observe where they met, and where they separated, at what point they became one, and at what point they were at discord-there was a delight in that! What matter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

Soul and body, body and soul- how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The sense could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! 

"I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common peo- ple say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever the personality chooses to do is absolutely delightful to me. 

 The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her. 

 There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever- present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls.

 It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.  

Anna Cassmer Ling-Vannérus

the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray. [A Novel.]

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