《The Picture of Dorian Gray》的笔记

it's totally whilde!
most of the quotes are from the extraodinary Lord Henry.

Beauty

• knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one.

• 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 spring-time or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes prices of those who have it.............. people say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

• all art is quite useless.

• but beauty,real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

• every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Marriage

• married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one;s personality.

• when a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Woman try their luck; man risk theirs.

• men marry because they are tired; women because they are curiou: both disappointed.

• one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception abosolutely necessary for both parties.

Man's Nature

• anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often

• civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

• that a burnt child loves the fire.

• 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.

• to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.

• more than enough is as good as a feast.

• moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal.

• nothing is serious nowadays. At least nothing should be.

• perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words.

• we live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

• the one charm of the past is that it is the past.

• one should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

• there is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

• we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

• there are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

• nowadays people know the price of every thing and the value of nothing.

• nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

• if a man is a gentlemanm he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knowsis bad for him.

• young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

• every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it.

• there are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating---- people who know absoltely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

• unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.

• all that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

• children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

• whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the moblest motives.

• it often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

• as it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

• it is only the sacred things that are worth touching.

• 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 sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written fot him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that ove owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--- these are the two things that govern us.

• being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose i know.

• conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. that's all.

• i like persons better than priciples. and i like persons with no principles that anything else in the world.

• poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

Love

• a man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

• to adore someone is certainly better than being adored.

• when one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.

• those for are faithful know only the trival side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

• the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty and their fidelity, i call either the lethergy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional liefe what consistency is to the life of the intellect--- simply a confession of failure.

Always Young

• the secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

• to get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies.

• time is jealous of you.

• we degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. YOUTH! YOUTH! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!

Women

• women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

• the husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.

• the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

• always! that is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when i hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

• no woman is a genius. women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

• women were better suited to bear sorrow than men, They lived on their emotions. They onley thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes.