Important Dorian Gray Quotes

Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine. ~ Oscar Wilde

Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities ~ Chinua Achebe

What sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! ~ Oscar Wilde

I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. 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. ~ Oscar Wilde

him. There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning - poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There ~ Oscar Wilde

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. ~ Oscar Wilde

[On writing more Sherlock Holmes stories.] 'I don't care whether you do or not,' said Bram. 'But you will, eventually. He's yours, till death do you part. Did you really think he was dead and gone when you wrote "The Final Problem"? I don't think you did. I think you always knew he'd be back. But whenever you take up your pen and continue, heed my advice. Don't bring him here. Don't bring Sherlock Holmes into the electric light. Leave him in the mysterious and romantic flicker of the gas lamp. He won't stand next to this, do you see? The glare would melt him away. He was more the man of our time than Oscar was. Or than we were. Leave him where he belongs, in the last days of our bygone century. Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago, and we were his bloody *friends.* No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray. ~ Graham Moore

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity. ~ Oscar Wilde

There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new. ~ Oscar Wilde

I did not want any external influence in my life. You know how independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. ~ Oscar Wilde

Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.'
'You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.'
'Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?'
'Before either.'
'I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad.
'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?'
'I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.'
'Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.'
'I should like that awfully.'
The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly. ~ Oscar Wilde

Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. ~ Oscar Wilde

You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. ~ Oscar Wilde

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait) ~ Oscar Wilde

I have no terror of death. It is the coming of death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air around me. ~ Oscar Wilde

How English you are, Basil! If one puts
forward an idea to a real Englishman, - always a rash
thing to do, - he never dreams of considering whether the
idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any
importance is whether one believes it one's self. Now, the
value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it
will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics,
sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better
than principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. How
often do you see him? ~ Oscar Wilde

You do not see the painting in the attic
The maggots on skin that tear.
The beauty is a trick.
Narcissus - promise naught but air...' ~ Dorian Gray ~ Stella Coulson

But in reality, with Mr. Ellison there is an essence of probity about him; unlike Dorian Grey, him and his hidden portrait are both wonderful. When he speaks there is a certain intonation he gets that reveals so much about him, that you can't help but to feel rapt, and so few get to hear his unspoken thought because they are fixated on the bling and the big show. ~ Avra Amar Filion

You look ill," Matthew observed. "Is it my dancing? Is it me personally?"
"Perhaps I'm nervous," she said. "Lucie did say you didn't like many people."
Matthew gave a sharp, startled laugh, before schooling his face back into a look of lazy amusement. "Did she? Lucie's a chatterbox."
"But not a liar," she said.
"Well, fear not. I do not dislike you. I hardly know you," said Matthew. "I do know your brother. He made my life miserable at school, and Christopher's, and James's."
"Alastair and I are very different," Cordelia said. She didn't want to say more than that. It felt disloyal to Alastair. "I like Oscar Wilde, for instance, and he does not."
The corner of Matthew's mouth curled up. "I see you go directly for the soft underbelly, Cordelia Carstairs. Have you really read Oscar's work?"
"Just Dorian Gray," Cordelia confessed. "It gave me nightmares."
"I should like to have a portrait in the attic," Matthew mused, "that would show all my sins, while I stayed young and beautiful. And not only for sinning purposes - imagine being able to try out new fashions on it. I could paint the portrait's hair blue and see how it looks."
"You don't need a portrait. You are young and beautiful," Cordelia pointed out.
"Men are not beautiful. Men are handsome," objected Matthew.
"Thomas is handsome. You are beautiful," said Cordelia, feeling the imp of the perverse stealing over her. Matthew was looking stubborn. "James is beautiful too, ~ Cassandra Clare

We live in a world when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. ~ Oscar Wilde

Though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget ~ Oscar Wilde

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

experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon ~ Oscar Wilde

Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh new 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 only you knew what Dorian Gray is to me! ~ Oscar Wilde

Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that ~ Oscar Wilde

Dear Producers,
Something is radiating deep within me and it must be transmitted or I will implode and the world will suffer a great loss, unawares. Epic are the proportions of my soul, yet without a scope who cares am I? This is why I must but must be one of the inhabitants of MTV's "Real World." Only there, burning brightly into a million dazzled eyes, will my as yet uncontoured self assume the beauteous forms that are not just its own, but an entire market niche's, due.

I am a Kirk Cameron-Kurt Cobain figure, roguishly quirky, dandified but down to earth, kooky but comprehensible; denizen of the growing penumbra between alternative and mainstream culture; angsty prophet of the already bygone apocalypse, yet upbeat, stylish and sexy!

Oscar Wilde wrote, "Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating... [they] live the poetry [they] cannot write." As with Dorian Gray, life is my art! Oh MTV, take me, make me, wake me from my formless slumbers and place me in the dreamy Real World of target marketing. ~ Dave Eggers

Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot. ~ Oscar Wilde

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

For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne. ~ Oscar Wilde

paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, ~ Oscar Wilde

A line from The Picture of Dorian Gray kept running through my head- a line which, I thought, might have been written by the Devil himself:

"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. ~ Syrie James

You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me. ~ Oscar Wilde

There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstand, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous, and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own. ~ Oscar Wilde

You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. ~ Oscar Wilde

A dream of form in days of thought'--who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. ~ Oscar Wilde

The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. ~ Oscar Wilde

What o'clock is it, Victor? asked Dorian Gray, sleepily. ~ Oscar Wilde

I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth. ~ Oscar Wilde

I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. ~ Oscar Wilde

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

He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience. ~ Oscar Wilde

Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came - oh, my beautiful love! - and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. ~ Oscar Wilde

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. ~ Oscar Wilde

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly. ~ Oscar Wilde

I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.'A dream of form in days of thought: ~ Oscar Wilde