The Picture of Dorian Gray
1890
A young man makes a devil's bargain: let my face stay forever beautiful while the portrait ages in my place. So begins Oscar Wilde's only novel, a gothic masterpiece of vanity, corruption, and terrible consequence.Dorian Gray is the most beautiful man in London, and he knows it. When painter Basil Hallward captures that perfection on canvas, Dorian wishes he could remain forever young while the portrait bears the marks of his sins instead. His wish granted, Dorian descends into a life of hedonism and cruelty, each act of debauchery recorded only on the hidden canvas. He stays beautiful. The painting grows grotesque.Wilde weaves a poisonous seduction through Lord Henry Wotton, whose witty philosophy of pleasure and self-indulgence poisons Dorian's soul. The novel reads like a fever dream, lush and unsettling, questioning whether art should bear any moral responsibility. This is a book about the horror of aging, the shallowness of vanity, and the impossibility of escaping oneself.
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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
