The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel written by Oscar Wilde, first published in 1891. It was his only novel, and it was brilliant. I finished it last week and have not stopped thinking about it since. It is a very complicated, philosophical work, which will be explained in a bit, but also extremely suspenseful. It's not a mystery book or a thriller, or an adventure, but it does manage to grab that cliff-hanger effect. I think that's the best thing about this book. It is so complex but manages to exce in every component of it. It's a nice, rich book. Then there are, of course, the characters.

The book follows the character Dorian Gray who as a very young man, has a master-portrait painted of him by his friend Basil Hallward. After meeting Lord Henry though, he becomes convinced of the utmost importance of beauty, and in a moment of passion, wishes that the portrait will grow old and carry the burden of his soul while he himself could forever remain young, beautiful and pure, at least in appearance. After the suicide of his first love Sybil Vane, he begins noticing the deterioration of the painting, hides it away, and from then on lives his life freely, following the epigrams thrown about by Lord Henry, eventually transforming from the purest of humans to the most grotesque, cold, and immoral. Unable to reclaim the value of goodness, decades later, he attempts to erase all evidence of his soul's dirt by destroying the panting, and thus unintentionally kills himself.

So there are not a whole lot of characters, but there are only three that are specifically explained in depth. Those are Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotton, and Basil Hallward. The other characters can all be split into either the members of the intellectual, polite society of which Dorian is a part of and the victims to Dorian's cruelty.

So Dorian Gray,though he is a very interesting character, is more of a reflection of the influence of others. He changes often though, which is interesting, and he also is interesting in that his past is kept very vague despite the great uniqueness of it. Dorian starts out very nice, pure, and polite. He is friends with Basil Hallward and is very happy being so. He sits for his paintings quietly, borrows his music to learn on piano, and is glowing with a great personal beauty. Then Lord Henry starts polluting his mind, and Dorian starts following Henry's liberal ways. After the portrait separates his soul from his body, he grows worse and worse. Why? The main belief of Henry's that Dorian adopts is that life is a collection of experiences, that experiences are but our own mistakes, and that the more experiences you have, the better. The final pushing point is the book that Henry gives Dorian. W'll get into that later too, but the book basically fascinates Dorian so much that he becomes poisoned by it.

The book is followed by a gap of several years. Dorian becomes obsessed with experiencing everything then, and this is easy for him because, being ever beautiful, he can get whatever he wants. So he starts changing, and people start noticing. He himself begins feeling very guilty, blaming the painting for killing him, calling the blessing a curse, and finally regretting that it all happened. There are two times in the book when he tries to actually fix himself up. The first time is when he cruelly breaks his engagement with Sybil. Upon returning home, he sees the first signs of change in the painting. On his own, he then decides to go back and marry her, since he now understands the wickedness of his actions and wishes to erase it from his soul. However, finding out that she killed herself, he feels extreme remorse for a moment, but then Henry steps in, convincing Dorian of the beautiful romance of her death, and washes away any want of reconciliation. This is what happens the second time too. The second time, Dorian is about to sleep with a girl that is in love with him, but decides to instead break his relations with her in order to spare her of his terrible influence. Oh, there's something interesting about Dorian. It is his transition from Basil to Henry and from positive to negative influence. That'll come later then.

Anyways, so both times, Henry convinces Dorian not to try to be good, but both times, Henry's convincing is helped along by the portrait. The second time, Dorian still continues to believe that he is getting better until he sees his painting and how he actually had turned worse, seeing that his good action, as Henry said, was but one of vanity, hypocrisy, and curiosity. Now these little moments are important because they are out of the norm. Dorian, like most of us, regrets our own action, but is too frightened to actually feel remorse, for remorse is to confront one's own conscience, and when you do that, then you feel thus obliged to do something about the faults. Doing something is actually very frightening, and Dorian is acutely frightened of his own conscience for the duration of the book, being his greatest downfall. So these moments are so brave when he wishes to make a change. However, though he wishes to make change, he doesn't. Notice that when he wishes to change, he is alone. He is only stopped from change when he is convinced to stop by Henry or other, other being his conscience in that second time. So Dorian, poor Dorian, manages to stay good, or wishing to be good, and most of all maintaining an understanding of what is good despite all his actions, and this is only when he is alone to contemplate over his sins. Then his sins are twisted by Henry, the futility of his goodness twisted by the damage of his soul, and I wonder whether without Henry he would have been a better person, and the answer is an obvious yes, for conscience catches us all, and seeing it is a gift if one can act freely to fix himself, but a death sentence if one is haunted by it, lacking the ability to act to change it on his own.

The other thing was his childhood. Rarely mentioned in the book, it is a wonderfully colorful, but also tragic. According to Henry, of course, tragedy is the most exquisitely interesting of things. It is wonderfully beautiful and romantic. Yet it is so little spoken of. It is like a very subtle subplot that had already concluded. Dorian’s mother was the daughter of a very respected and wealthy gentleman, Kelso. His mother, in love with a man beneath her class, she married him despite her father’s consent, and then did during childbirth. His father died soon after, and left to the care of his grandfather, Dorian suffered. Kelso despised Dorian for killing his daughter. What a story, right? That poor boy, he was kept in a single grimy room, alone, for years of quiet. This is the room where Dorian keeps his soul. I love these great juicy bits that are left out, like when he blackmails Alan to destroy Basil’s body, where you never find out what exactly he blackmails Alan with. Of course if you’re getting into the psychology of the character and all, you could start going on about childhood trauma and how it has affected his vision of the world, but honestly, more than anything, that lonely childhood worsened him less than preserved his youth to be one of only one terror, Kelso, while others of us could be subjected to many. Of course the isolation could also have made him more vulnerable to the influence of others. If only he learned that there are actually terrible people in the world, he may have been spared the influence of Lord Henry.

Well that’s enough of Dorian for now I think, and Henry is in many ways vastly more interesting. Henry is essentially Dorian after all, or rather the other way around. See we could do Basil and Henry in one I guess. Basil is the painter and he is a terribly good person aside from the fact that he is a bit creepy, but that’s not so bad at all in context. So according to Henry, the only time that Basil was eve interesting was when he explained his feelings regarding Dorian. Basil has an obsession with Dorian, at first at least. He becomes dependent on him for artistic inspiration, as though life has come into existence when Basil met Dorian and life certainly becomes dull when he leaves. Basil understood that beauty is not everything but that there was great value in it. He gained art out of Dorian’s beauty. If he painted him again after what Dorian had done, I’d think the painting would be quite terrible.

Anyways, Basil is the good. When Dorian is with him he is pure. Of course Basil is a bit of a jailer when it came to Dorian, the opposite of Henry. Henry says what all else are afraid to say. There’s a great quotation about this that I will write out in the end. Henry is anyways, a terrible influence to those around him. He says things that if you believe, can cause terrible harm. Bail says even Harry does not believe everything he says. That is the flaw of t hose in the aristocracy, that they are too brilliant, too persuasive, too secure, and to free for their own good, and most of all, to society’s good. But Dorian does believe him instead of Basil. That was a mistake. So Henry speaks well, in his low musical voice, and you’d have to wonder, what would the book be like told from his point of view. Honestly, I think it’d be terribly boring. Henry is a great character when told from Dorian’s point of view because Dorian is pretty fun. He’s a terrible person, Dorian. He ruins lives left and right. But he at least does something. Then you get these interjections by Henry of long speeches filled with philosophy. Very fun. But if the entire book was written like that, it’d be very tiring.

Not to say that Dorian’s narration is any less interesting because Dorian is very intelligent, and you could very clearly track how he grows more and more intelligent as he goes, saying his own philosophies at times, much like Harry. The thing is, though, Dorian actually has the chance to put these theories into practice. He is young and beautiful. Thus he can do anything he could possibly want. Harry is all talk. That is why he could be the spirit of evil and still be considered a gentleman. Dorian is far more active. Harry does have one very interesting moment near the end when he goes back a it on the marriage taboo. He gets divorced from a meaningless marriage to which he claimed he had no attachment. You’d think then that the divorce would not mean anything to him at all, and if anything, he’d be rejoicing. That is not the case though. He says that marriage is like a bad habit and that all habits are missed, especially the bad ones. This is Harry’s round-about way to say that he misses his wife. This is quite a sentimental moment for him, especially since Harry has a hidden fear for sentiment. Anyways, his sentiment for Dorian, at least, is apparent, despite the fact that he has corrupted the angel to become a terrible vision of what Harry fantasizes on. He never meant for it to get this bad. Harry, even, though he caused it, does not understand just how terrible Dorian had become, as shown in the same conversation when he says crime is for the lower classes as art is for the higher, in experiencing profound experiences. Dorian, he says, is not capable of crime, especially murder. How little Harry knows. There is that pause when he leaves when Harry seems like he’d say something. What is this? It is never revealed, again, a wonderful mystery to speculate upon, but it may very well have been something too concretely sentimental to be expressed by such a “cold cynic” as Harry (the quotations being for that it is more of a put-on appearance rather than a true personality.) Harry is one of the few characters that actually voice his curiosity over Dorian’s lasting youth. He voices it in this conversation too. When he leaves, I think, personally, that he was going to ask how he managed it, seriously. Then perhaps he decided that he’d rather not know. Perhaps he was afraid. Perhaps he thought it didn’t matter. Perhaps this was because the youth was a wonder that he did not want shattered. Perhaps this was because he feels guilty, for perhaps this theory of his, that beauty and youth are the only things worth having in life, was a flawed theory that he’d soon take back. Perhaps he had this deprived Dorian of the wonders of soul. Perhaps. It is impossible to know, which is the beauty of it.

So yes I think that’s good enough for characters, and so I’ll go on to some of the writing style stuff I guess. It’s changes gradually. The book isn’t all that long but it’s pretty long and during it, the writing gets a lot more intellectual, but along with that, the writing style changes with the subject that is being spoken of. For example, there is the philosophy stuff. There’s this chapter, Chapter 11. If you’re a plotline reader, as in one that just loves plot and not much else, this chapter is where you’d fall over. Nothing happens except for a bunch of years pass and he describes learning about a bunch of things like jewelry. It could get really boring, I understand, but I think it is absolutely wonderful He gets into this passage about waking up in the middle night and realizing things. He makes a bunch of allusions to different bits of knowledge that he had gained and it is special. It doesn’t come off as arrogant either. It comes off as sincerely excited as well as well-informed. Anyways, so the sentences here could get massive and the words longer, while in other moments of suspense, like when he wills Basil, the sentences get very short and the words simple.

The nice thing though, as I said, is that he invokes suspense without having to resort to constant uses of ellipsis, italicized words or strong language. There are no recurring metaphors of dark alleys or bats or shivering winds or whatnot. Wilde simply describes what exactly is happening in a manner that is short and blunt to give off the general effect. As for suspense, Wilde does not blatantly play with the reader, as in he does not say something shocking and then abruptly end a chapter. There are many breathing moments and the language remains ever beautiful. The playing with the readers occurs with the gaps and unanswered questions but not with unrevealed information that is simply delayed for dramatic purposes. There is much dramatic irony, but there is little teasing, little manipulation, and little concession to the plot of the book. That is the most terrible crime for a writer, I think. I am most definitely wrong in saying that, and the law definitely has many clauses and exceptions, but in my opinion, the plot is ever secondary. Twists are treats as are exiting incidents and daunting climaxes. It is of the utmost importance to first have the characters right and then to write it well, without condescending to the level of textbook. This is precisely why I avoid mysteries and thrillers as much as possible. There could be wonderful thrillers, I think, as well as mysteries, but more often than not, they tend to disappoint me. This is because they focus very much on the plot, and their audience is made of plot readers, which is fine, but I am not one. So the author writes for plot readers, meaning the writing is kept as obvious as possible, with ambiguities existing only in the plot, and this done clearly so that the reader could think it as a clue that will surely matter soon, but a clue too little for the answer to be guessed through its use. This is what makes the readers try to guess, doing the “He’s the killer” kind of stuff. That’s fine, but honestly, it interests me very little. I just don’t care enough about who the killer is, but much rather why the characters in the book want to know who the killer is, how they must be reacting to the situation and how the writer represents the situation through subtle things such as symbolism through the landscape or the syntax used by the characters that shows their inner conflicts. You know why this is? Well, I think it’s because most humans tend to be very self-absorbed, and so they wouldn’t care so much about who the killer is as to how it will affect them, and this how is subjected to the past events that concerned the character personally as well as their natural personality and such. Anyways, this all boils down to whether you prefer the who’s, what’s, and when’s or the how’s and why’s. I’m mostly the how’s I guess. It all depends on people. So what mystery books do I actually like? Sherlock Holmes. That’s pretty much it. I don’t remember a smidge of mystery from those books though. All I remember, (and of these I remember all very well) are the descriptions of Holmes as a character, Watson’s personal thoughts, and their interactions. Holmes is one of the best-written characters ever, I believe. This is because of how much of an image the character puts on. He is very Henry, actually. Holmes is absolutely self-absorbed, and goes into his thoughts constantly, and is opinions, though his opinions often seem to be but a theory made of thoughts, and never his feelings. This is the true mystery, and you’d think they’d be revealed if he was the one narrating, but they aren’t. It’s maddening and makes you love him dearly, and in the few moments when actions portray feeling, for him, and Watson, being so sensitive, expands on it, I feel so extremely glad. You do fall in love with characters, and that by how they are written, and so mystery and thriller doesn’t work for me. You cannot love an event, only what it represents and who it involves. I will leave fantasy for another day. Now Dorian Gray. What a tangent. You see what I mean by humans are self-absorbed.

Well, what did I say I’ll speak about? Oh, right, influences and of the book within the book. The influences are great because it addresses the idea that none of us are our own person. We are very much sharing lives. We are very much a societal species. If we lived on our own, we’d be wonderful or terrible, for there are only wonderful and terrible people. It is just tat we wonderful people are influenced by the terrible and we terrible people are influenced by the wonderful and thus we get this nice mélange of a people in every person and so we end up much the same. So you can’t really negate racia and gender-based generalizations completely because who we are exposed to does make a difference, ad this effect grows exponentially. Then again there are computers, phones, and televisions now, so that theory will evolve very soon. We may all just become soon enough a person each made of all people, and so be all very much the same in personality, but that is for sci-fi. In this case, we are in the late 19th century, and I love it here because things are nice and personal. Dorian is exposed to nobody at first, and so is pure for he is naturally a wonderful person and grows only from his own wonder-filled self. Then he is exposed to basil and he becomes wonderful still for Basil is also a wonderful person, though he does get influenced by the artists’ love of beauty, and so grows slightly vain or his own looks. Then he is exposed to Henry. Basil understood the danger of being exposed to people in general. You don’t know who is going to start influencing him. We know Dorian is very vulnerable to influence for his isolation and also the general vulnerability that all good people share. Basil, knowing this, acts as Kelso did, but not strongly enough, for Henry emerges, a definitively terrible person. You could really tell what kind of a person someone is by how the people around him act. One that influences others to be good is the best of people. One that influences people to be bad is the worst. One that influences people to be bad while staying relatively good themselves is the cruelest of people. Influence matters so much because confession exists, and self-purification. Henry can confess his sins and be perhaps forgiven, but the damage is not done only to him, but also to Dorian, and for all the forgiveness that God can shed on Henry, none would go on Dorian. Pity only goes on Dorian, but influence is a poison. This will lead nicely to the book.

The book is Dorian’s poison. It speaks of experience, a French boy that as he grows, spends that time experiencing everything he possibly can. Dorian does the same. It is very apparent. The man in the book grows to be afraid of his own reflection. This is because, as with most men, his soul is written on his face. Dorian’s soul is separate from his face though. It is on a painting and that is his true reflection, a terrible, terrible curse to have. Anyways, Dorian reads this book and imitates it. The writing is intriguing, of course Henry gave it to him, and when you love something too much, you give that loved thing the liberty to ruin you. The book, Henry says, was not at fault, for as Oscar Wilde said, all art is quite useless. We are what we are and will be what we will be regardless of art. That is a lie, in my opinion, but as Wilde was part of the art nouveau movement, where art is done for only art’s sake, on surface and symbols, where going beyond it is done at the spectator’s peril, where art shows what it shows and words say what they say and mean what they mean, saying nothing more and noting less, you cannot know whether this absurd statement of humans being free from the influence of art, is meant to be taken seriously by Wilde or not. Nonetheless, Henry says so, and perhaps he is right. Perhaps, as Dorian does quite like Henry, he is trying to place the blame of his living death to the book rather than to his friend. The book does seem t have a rather jarring effect on him though.

Finally, so this book within the book; can it be this book itself? Can Dorian Gray be reading Dorian Gray? Well, obviously n, since the book’s description does not match this one exactly, but the nameless book may be representing a power that this book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is representing as well. Can this book do to a reader what the unknown book did to Dorian? After all, in the end of the nameless book, the character feels regret for his past actions as does Dorian, negating the argument that since this book, The Picture, has a negative message towards a life of pleasure, no reader can ever be tempted to lead that life of corruption using Dorian Gray as a justification. Dorian leads the life of the nameless character despite the warning ending. So can Dorian Gray do something to one of us? Honestly, I do think so. Probably to neither me nor you, but possibly to some unstable Wilde worshipper. So is it then immoral to write a book that can have such an influence on people. Well, arguably, yes? Are the parts of the book that cause this negative influence essential for creating a good book? No. There are perfectly nice, G-rated books out there that are just as enjoyable as Dorian Gray. I mean, To Kill A Mockingbird is an amazing book, but who is ever going to go lead a life of crime because of reading it. So why let Dorian gray come to life? Why not let the entire world read of Scout and only Scout? Well, what shall I tell Wilde? You’re not allowed to write about this stuff? Well, they tried that, those 19th century guys, and it didn’t work. Why did it not work? Because it’s such an annoying thing to say. You can’t do that… What an annoying phrase, for everyone can do anything, and everyone is allowed to do anything, though some things ought not to be done anyways. That is up to that specific person though. Anyways, I do not think that writing The Picture of Dorian Gray is part of that group of things one oughtn’t do. It’s a wonderful book that will cause damage, but in this sense, the art nouveau is correct. Art is art, and this art is beautiful. Some guy told Mozart that his piece had too many notes. Mozart asked him which specific notes he should take out. Every note is there for a reason, and this reason may not be available in words, but it does exist. The Picture of Dorian Gray was released into a society that feared scandal. What society calls an immoral book is because it shows society’s shame though. Society doesn’t have to be ashamed of itself, but it shouldn’t suppress people of their own art for fear of what they may have t bear for the sake of art. And ah, the everlasting phrase, for the sake of art, as cliché as it is by now, still holds much meaning, no. It is essential for this book. This book is absolutely beautiful, with the most grotesque of events written with mastery. He is Edgar Allan Poe mixed with every French Poet of the 19th century. Wilde is a brave man.

As a last suggestion, if you love this book, I advise you, do not watch the movie. The 2009 one, that is. I watched it, and sure, it was fine to some extent as all movies are, but the alteration to the book is a bit offensive at times. For example, the portrait moves in the film. It makes hissing sounds too. I mean, what is that? Fantasy belongs with the extremes, and this portrait, if any more mystical than in the book, must go over to the fantasy, which is such a let-down when put with the sophistication of most the rest of it. Anyways, the only reason you’d watch the movie is if you’ve got a thing for Ben Barnes. He’s actually surprisingly adequate in the movie, as Dorian Gray. The most tragic thing is the screenplay really, no fault to the actors. Ben was a nice surprise, especially after that Narnia stuff. If you like Colin Firth, then definitely do not watch the movie. The role is a bit of a disappointment for such an amazing actor. Henry’s all wrong for the movie. The film could be good in a way in that it shows you just how bad the crimes that Dorian commits in the book are. Being that it is still in the 19th century, the censorship must have been crazy for publication, making Wilde suggest everything instead of actually saying it. Since we all like Dorian, we make his crimes seem like much less in our head. The movie does a good job at showing just how terrible he became. Actually, the movie pushes it a bit far.. He becomes worse than ever. He actually tried to kill Harry in the end. I mean, it’s like how most productions of Romeo and Juliet cut that part when Romeo kills Paris because it’s too saddening to see Romeo turn into a killer. This movie does the opposite. It gets Romeo, makes him kill Paris and then kill Friar Lawrence too while he’s at it. It’s very cruel in that sense. Anyways, so yes, avoid the movie. If you want to get a nice idea of what Dorian looks like, Ben Barnes doesn’t match the description at all, but he works great for it anyways, I think. It’s nice to have a concrete face when the face matters so much for the book. So yes, there’s worth in the movie, but very little, and you watch it at your own prevail. Beware.

Alright I just finished the quotations and realized this is way too good of a book to end a blog of it by talking about the movie. So one last thing, I promise. There are a whole lot of philosophies in the book, right? Well, as you’re reading it, if you’ve read absolutely any books in you life, you start to make connections. The more the better. So here are some books that share in philosophy. There’s Hedda Gabler with the idea of a beautiful death. There’s those million Shakespeare references made in the book, particularly to Hamlet and Ophelia within Hamlet. There’s Brave New World with the concept of pleasure. There’s the life f Arthur Rimbaud, the poet, who expressed the free and rash life of passion and sensation alone. There’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being with the idea of love being separated from physical acts of love, and the idea of human relation and lies to the conscience versus to others. There’s The Scarlet Letter with the pride in showing a recovery from sin. There’s the Tempest with Caliban’s ugliness. There’s The Catcher in the Rye with the idea of self-torture through a state of mind and the idea of cynicism and its effect emotionally. There’s A Separate Peace with the idea of the very importance of youth and the influence of people and the power of infatuation and beauty. There’s Sartorist with the idea of aristocracy and the change in viewing the real world. There’s connections all over my place. Get what I mean? Yeah, so I think we’ve sufficed.

Read folks, Read.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.”

“Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life.”

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things”

“We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.”

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.”

“Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”

“The new manner in art, the fresh mode of looking at life, suggested so strangely by the merely visible presence of one who was unconscious of it all; the silent spirit that dwelt In dim woodland, and walked unseen in open field, suddenly showing herself, Dryad-like and not afraid, because in his soul who sought for her there had been waked that wonderful vision to which alone are wonderful things revealed; the mere shapes and patterns of things becoming, as it were, refined, and gaining a kind of symbolical value, as though they were themselves patterns of some other and more perfect form whose shadow they made real: how strange it all was!”

“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 time, and with joy.”

“A rose shook in her blood, and shadowed her cheeks.”

“I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real… I have grown sick of shadows.”

“There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.”

“And indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.”

“It was an almost cruel joy – and perhaps in every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has it’s place – that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat over-emphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had most dearly valued.”

“As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose!”

“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”

“There steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.”

“Yet one had ancestors in literature, as well as in one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvelous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.”

“There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.”

“You have had more to do with my life than you think.”

“The way seemed interminable, and the streets like the black web of some sprawling spider. The monotony became unbearable, and, as the mist thickened, he felt afraid.”

“I think I have had too many friends.”

“You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art had 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.”

“There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven.”