Commonplace 10 George & Dorian Gray
Thursday October 16th 2014 is the 160th anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde.
In celebration of that fact, here is a selection of quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray - all seem pertinent to George. Thanks to Wikiquote, this was an easy task.
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
Nothing is ever quite true.
Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life.
We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.
One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
Thursday October 16th 2014 is the 160th anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde.
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| The Incomparable Oscar Wilde |
In celebration of that fact, here is a selection of quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray - all seem pertinent to George. Thanks to Wikiquote, this was an easy task.
Preface
To reveal art and conceal the
artist is art's aim.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode
of autobiography.
There is no such thing as a
moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is
all.
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.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
Chapter 1
It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things … Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
Chapter 1
It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things … Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
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!
2
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong
passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
3Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common
sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets
are one's mistakes.
4Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
A grande passion is the privilege of people who
have nothing to do.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's
self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a
romance.
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too
heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an
honour.
The only artists I have ever known who are personally
delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and
consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a
really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets
are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque
they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets
makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The
others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the
name men gave to their mistakes.
It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.
It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.
5
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.
But then the only things that one can use in
fiction are the things that one has ceased to use in fact. Believe me, no
civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a
pleasure is.Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.
Nothing is ever quite true.
Women... inspire us with the desire to do
masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out.
6Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life.
8
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.
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.
One can always be kind to people about whom one
cares nothing.
Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one
is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
9
Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour - that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour - that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
11
There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before
dawn...Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night
comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had
left off, and there steals oer us a terrible sense of the necessity for the
continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a
wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world
that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in
which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other
secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive,
at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even
of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.
Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory
of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He
felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when
separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the
soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.
Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think
not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
12
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
13
Each of us has heaven and hell in him.
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid.
Each of us has heaven and hell in him.
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid.
15
When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them,
they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
16
Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.
17
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions; my one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. A man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
Every effect that one produces gives one an
enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions; my one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. A man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.
Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an
appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one
has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It
merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best,
and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
18
It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. 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.
It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. 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.
The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty.
19
"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate".
"My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate".
Life is not governed by will or intention. 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, Dorian, that it is on
things like these that our lives depend.
Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don't
blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what
art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.
Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit.
But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets
them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the
desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral
are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.
20
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.
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