Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
The most popular highlights from The Picture of Dorian Gray, saved by readers on Screvi.
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“To define is to limit.”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
“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.”
“What of Art?-It is a malady.--Love?-An Illusion.--Religion?-The fashionable substitute for Belief.--You are a sceptic.-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.--What are you?-To define is to limit.”
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
“Some things are more precious because they don't last long.”
“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
“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.”
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”
“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
“I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.”
“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?”
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