Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"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."
204 Quotes
"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."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"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 someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on... The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"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."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—"
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all."
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
"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art."
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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