Posted by: Davide Grasso
in Quotes & Aphorisms (Soul)
Each of us has heaven and hell in him.
Written on friday march 30, 2012
from the book "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde
Each of us has heaven and hell in him.
I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They are but blank cheques.
There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.
There is a kind of fate that follows our good decisions. You always decide too late.
"Yes" he continued "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.". [...] "This is your doing Henry"; said the painted sourly. Lord Henry shrugged: "This is the true Dorian Gray, that is all".
The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. 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.
He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.