Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray": quotes from the book

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Literature gives a person many opportunities. She is able not only to appeal to our imagination, drawing amazing countries, street panoramas or images of extraordinary people. The work is able to excite the human soul, make you ask questions and, finding answers to them, change your attitude to life, to yourself. Classical literary novels do not lose their popularity precisely because, despite such a long existence, they continue to reflect the realities of our time, provide food for the most active reflections, and shape a person's worldview.

Notes in the margins

The most useful reading, according to many experts, is reading “with a pencil”. It allows you not only to get acquainted with the text, but also to mark for yourself special places in the book: those that coincide with your worldview, cause doubt, disagreement, or require additionalexplanation.

This is how marginal notes appear. Of particular interest for this kind of reading is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. This work is literally disassembled into quotes. They reflect the ideas of heroes about love, life, pleasures. The article will consider the most popular quotes from Dorian Gray.

Destined to be quoted

The novel simply could not go unnoticed, and its text was doomed to remain in the reader's memory thanks not only to an interesting plot and beautifully depicted images, but also to well-aimed, accurate thoughts that scattered into other areas of human life.

The novel is also interesting because it makes you think about those aspects of life that largely determine us: about pleasures, the position of a creative person in a soulless world. Already from the preface, the reader gets acquainted with the main problem of the work - the correlation of aesthetic issues with the ethical norms of society, as well as the place of art in the world. "The Picture of Dorian Gray", quotes from the preface, will help to understand her:

Do not attribute unhe althy tendencies to the artist: he is allowed to depict everything.

In essence, Art is a mirror that reflects the one who looks into it.

Any art is completely useless.

Main character

The character, after whom, in fact, the novel is named - Dorian Gray, personifies youth. He is just beginning to get to know the adult world, its most daring, vicious and attractive sides. Novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray", quotesfrom which are presented in the article, has become a wonderful image of the path that a pure soul passes, completely surrendering to pleasures.

Unusual portrait

Dorian gets a unique opportunity: to live forever young and beautiful, while the portrait, which depicts a young man, will reflect all the changes. Slowly and especially carefully, the author of the novel gives those terrible features that the canvas acquires. It reflects how the soul of a once pure youth was perverted.

Quotes about the portrait of Dorian Gray:

Undoubtedly, it was a wonderful work of art, and the resemblance was striking.

Dorian walked past the easel without answering, looking distracted, then turned to face it. At the first glance at the portrait, he involuntarily took a step back and flushed with pleasure. His eyes sparkled with such joy, as if he was seeing himself for the first time.

In the weak light, shaded by yellow silk curtains, the face in the portrait seemed to him changed. The expression was something else - cruelty was felt in the crease of the mouth.

A scream of horror escaped the artist when in the twilight he saw a terrible face, mockingly grinning at him from the canvas. There was something in the expression of that face that revolted the soul, filled it with disgust.

The pleasures that the hero plunged into had a downside: each of them demanded its own price. And the stronger it was, the higher the pay. It is much more terrible when for pleasures one has to give not gold and diamonds, but to lose oneself, to tear one’s soul apart, to becomea real monster.

The portrait becomes a kind of materialized double of Dorian. For society, Gray is a young man with a good origin, having a fortune, an interest in art, an ornament to any secular society, a real dandy. The face depicted on the canvas is terrifying - this is a voluptuous old man, looking at whom, one can only experience disgust.

Feelings and marriage

One of the main pleasures for a person has always been love, passion. In the novel, Dorian Gray also tries to get to know her. Quotes from the work reveal both his attitude to this bright feeling and the opinion of Lord Henry, who, due to his life experience and hedonistic attitude to life, does not share his friend's youthful illusions.

Here are some quotes from the novel:

Love begins with the fact that a person deceives himself, and ends with the fact that he deceives another. This is called a novel.

For those who are faithful in love, only its banal essence is available. The tragedy of love is known only to those who cheat.

You love everyone, and to love everyone is to love no one. Everyone is equally indifferent to you.

Love feeds on repetition, and only repetition turns simple lust into art. Moreover, every time you fall in love, you love for the first time. The object of passion changes, but the passion remains the one and only. The change only makes it stronger. Life gives a person, at best, only one great moment, and the secret of happiness is to experience this great moment as much as possible.more often.

Dorian Gray is able to love only himself and the beauty that surrounds him. An example is his admiration for actress Sybil Vane. He admired her game, deciding that he was in love with her without memory. However, as soon as the girl becomes not Juliet, but Sybil, that is, she acquires real features, devoid of ideality, Dorian leaves her. Faced with a cruel reality, the girl cannot cope with the grief that filled her heart and commits suicide.

In the novel, the boldness of the thoughts expressed by Lord Henry about women and marriage is striking. His own married life is more like a deal, where he and his wife exist, politely without violating each other's personal space. Lord Henry sees, first of all, the earthly, everyday essence of love. In women, he has not seen anything sublime for a long time:

Women, defending themselves, always go on the offensive. And their attacks often end in sudden and inexplicable surrender.

Women endure grief more easily than men, that's how they are made! They live only by feelings, they are only busy with them.

Men marry out of fatigue, women marry out of curiosity. For both, marriage brings disappointment.

A woman is the embodiment of matter triumphing over the spirit, while a man personifies the triumph of thought over morality.

Philosophy of a true hedonist

Oscar Wilde called him "the prince of paradox". He spoke boldly about the moral norms that reigned in society. There was a great deal of truth in his words, for Lord HenryWotton knew that behind appearances, origin and we alth, souls are hidden, which are not at all alien to the most vile and vile desires. He denounces all the vices of society before the young Dorian Gray.

Here are some of Lord Henry's quotes from Dorian Gray:

Good intentions are simply futile attempts to go against nature.

Most people these days are dying from a creeping form of slavish prudence, and everyone realizes too late that the only thing you will never regret is our mistakes and delusions.

These days, people know the price of everything, but they have no idea of the true value.

Good intentions are checks people write to a bank where they don't have a checking account.

Lord Henry is convinced that each person is capable of influencing another. As a result, the one who succumbs to it begins to live under the yoke of the desires and passions of another. So he loses himself, ceases to think independently and develop.

Of particular interest is Lord Henry's theory of "new hedonism". It is she who completely absorbs the young Dorian and becomes the meaning of his life. According to her, the only thing that deserves real value is youth. Only she is elusive, fleeting. It is impossible to return it, which means that it is necessary to fully enjoy the gifts that this time can bring.

In a rush, Dorian says that he would like to remain as young and beautiful forever. His words miraculously take on a literal meaning, and the hero stops aging.

This is from The Picture of Dorian Grayquotes about youth:

Youth is cheerful for no reason - this is its main charm.

We become hideous puppets with haunting memories of the passions we feared too much and the temptations we dared not give in to. Youth! Youth! There is nothing like her in the world!

Conclusion

The best quotes from "Dorian Gray" can easily be divided into a number of thematic groups: about youth, love and marriage, beauty, pleasure. The novel is perfect for reading both by teenagers, whose life is just beginning to move into adulthood, and by the older generation, which for some reason is in search of value orientations.

Often in life we need advice, wise instruction or an example. Quotes from "Dorian Gray" can be a great way to convey your thoughts to the interlocutor, as well as give you the opportunity to show off your erudition and knowledge in literature.