Le Portrait De Dorian Gray
1890
Le Portrait De Dorian Gray
1890
Translated by Albert Savine
In Victorian London's most dangerous studio, a young man makes a devil's bargain: he will stay forever young and beautiful while his portrait ages and decays in his place. Dorian Gray wishes for this impossible gift after hearing Lord Henry Wotton argue that beauty is the only virtue worth pursuing, and the wish is granted. What follows is a descent into every vice imaginable, each indulgence recorded not on Dorian's unchanging face but on the canvas hidden in the attic, growing more grotesque with every crime. The novel operates as both Gothic horror and philosophical satire, a dark mirror held up to the aesthetic movement that Wilde himself helped define. The true horror lies not in murder or madness but in the possibility that one can commit every atrocity while the world sees only a beautiful face. Over a century later, the book retains its power as a warning about the cost of severed conscience, about the lies we allow ourselves to believe when no one can see what we've become.
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“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.””
— Oscar Wilde
“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.””
— Oscar Wilde
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.””
— Oscar Wilde
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.””
— Oscar Wilde
“To define is to limit.””
— Oscar Wilde
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.””
— Oscar Wilde
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.””
— Oscar Wilde
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.””
— Oscar Wilde
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.””
— Oscar Wilde
