“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.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. ”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― The Secret History
― The Secret History
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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 Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
Olenka’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Olenka’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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