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A review by torishams
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
4.0
Men will truly obsess over a painting before going to therapy.
* 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. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
* “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.”
* “There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from a scientific point of view.” “Why?” “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sings, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for….”
* And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty.
* “They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,”…”And where do bad Americans go to when they die?”…”They go to America”
* “Do you think my nature so shallow?” cried Dorian Gray angrily. “No; I think your nature so deep.” “How do you mean?” “My dear boy, the people who love only once int heir lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up…”
* “…Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a rally great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating… He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others writ eh the poetry that they dare not realize.”
* There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.
* Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.
* The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of the virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.
* One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
* Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
* There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
* “I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.”
* 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.
* “What are you?” “To define is to limit.”
* 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.
* 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.
* 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. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
* “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.”
* “There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from a scientific point of view.” “Why?” “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sings, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for….”
* And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty.
* “They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,”…”And where do bad Americans go to when they die?”…”They go to America”
* “Do you think my nature so shallow?” cried Dorian Gray angrily. “No; I think your nature so deep.” “How do you mean?” “My dear boy, the people who love only once int heir lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up…”
* “…Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a rally great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating… He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others writ eh the poetry that they dare not realize.”
* There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.
* Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.
* The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with the possession of the virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.
* One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
* Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?
* There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
* “I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.”
* 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.
* “What are you?” “To define is to limit.”
* 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.
* 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.