the picture of dorian gray

"every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. the sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. it is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. the reason i will not exhibit this picture is that i am afraid that i have shown in it the secret of my own soul."

"i knew that i had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if i allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself."

"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."

"i feel that i have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."

"because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. he does not think his natural thoughts or burn with his natural passions. his virtues are not real to him. his sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. he becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. the aim of life is self-development. to realise one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. people are afraid of themselves, nowadays. they have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self."

"and beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation."

"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!"

"to project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or strange perfume; there was a real job in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims."

"it often happened when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves."

"well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. to test reality we must see it on the tight-rope."

"and unselfish people are colourless. they lack individuality."

"pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about."

"you will always be fond of me. i represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit."

"there was always something ridiculous about of people whom one ceased to love."

"when they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes."

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