Dorian Gray Quotes

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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,” she added.
“He was a very unprepossessing child,” said Matthew. “Scowly, and he hadn’t grown into his nose.”
“He’s grown into everything now,” Cordelia said.
Matthew laughed, again as if he was surprised to be doing it. “That was a very shocking observation, Cordelia Carstairs. I am shocked.”
― Cassandra Clare, Chain of Gold

“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

“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

“Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face!”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Why didn't you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It scares the living daylights out of everybody. Present company excepted, I’m sure.” “I don’t really do living or daylight,” Dorian said. “I’m a Gothic masterpiece.”
― H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

“El cuerpo peca una vez, y se acabó, porque la acción es una forma de purificación.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Sólo los sentidos pueden curar el alma, como sólo el alma puede curar los sentidos.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Un nuevo hedonismo es lo que nuestro siglo necesita.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Se dedicó al estudio serio del gran arte aristocrático de no hacer nada.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Para recuperar la juventud, basta con repetir las mismas locuras que uno hizo entonces.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Los superficiales son los que sólo aman una vez en la vida. Lo que ellos llaman lealtad, su fidelidad, lo llamo yo letargo de la costumbre o falta de imaginación.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Los únicos artistas que he conocido que sean personalmente interesantes son los malos artistas. Los buenos, existen sólo en lo que hacen, y por lo tanto son completamente faltos de interés en lo que son. Un gran poeta, un auténtico gran poeta, es la menos poética de todas las criaturas. Pero los mediocres son fascinantes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Viven la poesía que no consigue escribir. Los otros, escriben la poesía que no se atreven a realizar.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Si Sibyl es capaz de dar un alma a quienes han vivido sin ella, si crea un sentimiento de belleza en personas cuyas vidas han sido sórdidas y miserables, si los libera de su egoísmo y les presta lágrimas por sufrimientos que no son suyos, se merece toda tu adoración, se merece la adoración del mundo entero.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“¿Llamas pasado al día de ayer?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Te convertiste en la encarnación visible de ese ideal nunca contemplado cuya memoria nos acosa a los artistas como un sueño exquisito. Te adoraba.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Nadie encuentra en la vida dos seres ideales. Pocos llegan a dar con uno solo.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorain Gray

“A veces no sabía si estaba leyendo los éxtasis espirituales de algún santo medieval o las confesiones morbosas de un pecador moderno.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Los hombres sienten un instinto natural de terror hacia las pasiones y sensaciones más fuertes que ellos, y son conscientes de que las comparten con las formas de existencia inferiores.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Su auténtico objetivo tenía que ser la experiencia misma, y no los frutos de la experiencia, fueran estos dulces o amargos.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Te voy a enseñar mi alma, vas a ver lo que creías que sólo Dios puede ver.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Había pecados que resultaban más interesantes al recordarlos que al hacerlos.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“El alma es una realidad terrible. Puedo uno comprarla, venderla, traficar con ella. Puede envenenarla o hacerla perfecta. Cada uno de nosotros tiene un alma. Lo sé bien.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I tought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last - such a little time. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories