The Picture of Dorian Gray quotes

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.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

“

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know

,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves.

Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from the grass and examined it. “I am quite sure I shall understand it,” he replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk, “and as for believing things,

I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

”

“

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.

That is all.”

“

My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant.

How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?”

“

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one

,” said the young lord, plucking another daisy.

cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. “Yes; horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me?

However, I don’t propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?”

“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.

”

“Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side 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 satisfied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

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. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.

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?

Yes; there had been things in his boyhood that he had not understood. He understood them now. Life suddenly became fiery-coloured to him. It seemed to him that he had been walking in fire. Why had he not known it?

Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful.

Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly. … Ah! realize your youth while you have it.

Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!

”

You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won’t smile. … People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

… Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully.

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

”

“

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.

I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way!

“They are the last refuge of the complex. But I don’t like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

I am glad he is not, after all—though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn’t really want it, and I really do.”

“

Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.

”

“Yes,” answered Lord Henry dreamily, “the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing.

Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

”

“Yes,” murmured Lord Henry, settling his buttonhole in his coat; “and when they grow older they know it. But I don’t want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine.

Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it.

Besides, I always deal with Dartmoor’s tradesmen, and consequently they never bother me. What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information.”

Lord Henry shook his head. “

American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as English women are at concealing their past

,” he said, rising to go.

The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes; it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect, as it were.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.

“Quite so,” answered the young lord. “

It is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves.

”

“I am quite content with philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal to science to put us straight.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

”

Lord Henry looked over at Mr. Erskine. “

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin.

If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.”

“Then commit them over again,” he said gravely. “

To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.

”

“Yes,” he continued, “that is one of the great secrets of life.

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.

”

“So sorry I am late, Dorian. I went to look after a piece of old brocade in Wardour Street and had to bargain for hours for it.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

”

“

Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

”

“

My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

”

Lord Henry smiled. “

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

”

“Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists.

Good artists exist simply 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.

He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid.

They went out into the flickering, windblown sunlight and strolled down the dreary Euston Road. The passersby glanced in wonder at the sullen heavy youth who, in coarse, ill-fitting clothes, was in the company of such a graceful, refined-looking girl.

He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.

Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of some stranger. He had that dislike of being stared at, which comes on geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace.

Jim frowned from time to time when he caught the inquisitive glance of some stranger.

He had that dislike of being stared at, which comes on geniuses late in life and never leaves the commonplace.

Sibyl, however, was quite unconscious of the effect she was producing. Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips.

He was conscious also of the shallowness and vanity of his mother’s nature, and in that saw infinite peril for Sibyl and Sibyl’s happiness.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

His mother! He had something on his mind to ask of her, something that he had brooded on for many months of silence.

“If you want to make him marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is sure to do it, then.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

”

Lord Henry laughed. “The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.

We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism.

As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.

If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly encourage them.

“

Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about

,” he answered in his slow melodious voice. “But I am afraid I cannot claim my theory as my own. It belongs to Nature, not to me. Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval.

“Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.

Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.

”

“My dear fellow, medieval art is charming, but medieval emotions are out of date. One can use them in fiction, of course. But then the only things that one can use in fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact.

Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

”

“You will always like me, Dorian,” he replied. “Will you have some coffee, you fellows? Waiter, bring coffee, and fine champagne, and some cigarettes. No, don’t mind the cigarettes—I have some. Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. 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? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.”

Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. 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? Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me.

I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

”

Oh, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.” A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

Finally, he went over to the table and wrote a passionate letter to the girl he had loved, imploring her forgiveness and accusing himself of madness. He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.

He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

When Dorian had finished the letter, he felt that he had been forgiven.

“

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.

Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them.

Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. That is all that can be said for them.

They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

”

Religion consoles some. Its mysteries have all the charm of a flirtation, a woman once told me, and I can quite understand it. Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

Conscience makes egotists of us all.

Yes; there is really no end to the consolations that women find in modern life. Indeed, I have not mentioned the most important one.”

“There is no necessity,” rejoined his companion. “

Life has always poppies in her hands.

Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would not die. Ultimately, however, it did die. I forget what killed it.

She dragged it out again and assured me that I had spoiled her life. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, so I did not feel any anxiety. But what a lack of taste she showed!

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.

But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it.

“I was at the opera. You should have come on there. I met Lady Gwendolen, Harry’s sister, for the first time. We were in her box. She is perfectly charming; and Patti sang divinely. Don’t talk about horrid subjects.

If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened.

It is simply expression, as Harry says, that gives reality to things. I may mention that she was not the woman’s only child. There is a son, a charming fellow, I believe. But he is not on the stage. He is a sailor, or something.

“What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it?

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion.

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

“

I want the Dorian Gray I used to paint

,” said the artist sadly.

Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.

Art is always more abstract than we fancy.

Form and colour tell us of form and colour—that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour—that is all.

It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

And so when I got this offer from Paris, I determined to make your portrait the principal thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to me that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. The picture cannot be shown.

“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me.

Perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words.

”

“Oh, Harry!” cried the lad, with a ripple of laughter. “

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. But still I don’t think I would go to Harry if I were in trouble. I would sooner go to you, Basil.”

“I can’t explain it to you, Basil, but I must never sit to you again.

There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own.

I will come and have tea with you. That will be just as pleasant.”

It had perhaps served often as a pall for the dead. 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.

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.

It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. 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 evil real.

But moments such as these were rare. That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know.

He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.

Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society.

… curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.

Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself.

He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.

Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us.

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray’s opinion. He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence.

His great wealth was a certain element of security. Society—civilized society, at least—is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life.

And, after all, it is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in his private life.

Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrées, as Lord Henry remarked once, in a discussion on the subject, and there is possibly a good deal to be said for his view.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

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

Dorian looked at him and smiled. “What a way for a fashionable painter to travel! A Gladstone bag and an ulster! Come in, or the fog will get into the house. And mind you don’t talk about anything serious.

Nothing is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be.

”

“What is it all about?” cried Dorian in his petulant way, flinging himself down on the sofa. “I hope it is not about myself.

I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.

”

“I don’t wish to know anything about them.

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

”

Of course, you have your position, and your wealth, and all that kind of thing. But position and wealth are not everything. Mind you, I don’t believe these rumours at all. At least, I can’t believe them when I see you.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man’s face.

It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.

“

I was wrong. It has destroyed me.

”

“

Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil

,” cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.

Yet he had not dreamed at all. His night had been untroubled by any images of pleasure or of pain.

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

He turned round, and leaning upon his elbow, began to sip his chocolate. The mellow November sun came streaming into the room. The sky was bright, and there was a genial warmth in the air. It was almost like a morning in May.

“

The dead linger sometimes.

The man upstairs will not go away. He is sitting at the table with bowed head and outstretched arms. Alan! Alan! If you don’t come to my assistance, I am ruined. Why, they will hang me, Alan! Don’t you understand?

His forehead was throbbing with maddened nerves, and he felt wildly excited, but his manner as he bent over his hostess’s hand was as easy and graceful as ever.

Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.

Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age.

“

The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes,

” said Lord Henry, sipping his wine.

“But what world says that?” asked Lord Henry, elevating his eyebrows. “

It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.

”

“You will never marry again, Lady Narborough,” broke in Lord Henry. “You were far too happy.

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.

”

“If he had been, you would not have loved him, my dear lady,” was the rejoinder. “

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

You will never ask me to dinner again after saying this, I am afraid, Lady Narborough, but it is quite true.”

“What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!” exclaimed Lord Henry. “

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,

” he answered. “Or do you think that would make it a petticoat party?”

“Pray don’t, Lady Ruxton,” said Lord Henry. “

Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.

”

“He bores me dreadfully, almost as much as he bores her. She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.

Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences.”

“

Ah! what a nuisance people’s people are!

Try and make him come. By the way, Dorian, you ran off very early last night. You left before eleven. What did you do afterwards? Did you go straight home?”

and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man’s appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre. Ugliness that had once been hateful to him because it made things real, became dear to him now for that very reason.

Ugliness was the one reality.

The coarse brawl, the loathsome den, the crude violence of disordered life, the very vileness of thief and outcast, were more vivid, in their intense actuality of impression, than all the gracious shapes of art, the dreamy shadows of song.

He bit his lip, and for a few seconds his eyes grew sad. Yet, after all, what did it matter to him? One’s days were too brief to take the burden of another’s errors on one’s shoulders.

Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it.

The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.

Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed.

In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or for what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature.

The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

”

“

Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys.

You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England what she is.”

“

That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop.

”

“You need not be afraid.

Our countrymen never recognize a description.

”

“Never!

Scepticism is the beginning of faith.

”

“

To define is to limit.

”

“I daren’t, Mr. Gray. Why, she invents hats for me. You remember the one I wore at Lady Hilstone’s garden-party? You don’t, but it is nice of you to pretend that you do. Well, she made it out of nothing.

All good hats are made out of nothing.

”

“Like all good reputations, Gladys,” interrupted Lord Henry. “

Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

”

“My dear Gladys!” cried Lord Henry. “How can you say that?

Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.

Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.

“

I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.

”

“

Courage has passed from men to women. It is a new experience for us.

”

“

Sphinxes without secrets.

”

But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengeance out of the night and set the hideous shapes of punishment before him.

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination.

It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded.

With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

Besides, he had convinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stricken imagination, and looked back now on his fears with something of pity and not a little of contempt.

The elder man laughed. “

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.

But we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen.

But we are not likely to suffer from it unless these fellows keep chattering about this thing at dinner. I must tell them that the subject is to be tabooed. As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen.

Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

Besides, what on earth could happen to you, Dorian? You have everything in the world that a man can want. There is no one who would not be delighted to change places with you.”

“

The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty,

” said Lord Henry, lighting a cigarette.

He shook his head. “Knowledge would be fatal.

It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.

”

“

All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.

”

There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to.

There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”

I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco.

It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco.

It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”

“Because,” said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, “one can survive everything nowadays except that.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her.

Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her.

Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit.

But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.”

“Oh, some of the papers do. It does not seem to me to be at all probable. I know there are dreadful places in Paris, but Basil was not the sort of man to have gone to them.

He had no curiosity. It was his chief defect.

”

“I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you.

All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.

It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree.

“Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often,” cried Lord Henry, laughing. “That is one of the most important secrets of life. I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake.

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

But let us pass from poor Basil. I wish I could believe that he had come to such a really romantic end as you suggest, but I can’t.

Lord Henry laughed. “

If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart,

” he answered, sinking into an armchair.