Dorian Gray Quotes

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.

There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.

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.

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

the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure. a

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

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.

Inteligence lives longer than beauty.

because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.

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.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

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.