The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wisehouse Classics - with original illustrations by Eugene Dété)

“Ah! I have talked quite enough for to-day,” said Lord Henry, smiling. “All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.”

“I should have objected very strongly this morning, Lord Henry.” “Ah! this morning! You have lived since then.”

The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one’s life.

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some

disk, “and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.”

one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could

laughed. “I don’t desire to change anything in England except the weather,” he answered. “I am quite content with philosophic contemplation. But, as the nineteenth century has gone bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy, I would suggest that we should appeal to Science to put us straight. The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us

feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly.