Publisher : Chivers Audio Books
Publication Date : 1995 03
>> Oscar Wilde knew something about human nature
This novel is one of the best classics available It is more entertaining for its controversy value than for anything else Lord Henry Wotton is probably the most engaging character in the entire novel and one gets the impression he is the mouthpiece of Oscar Wilde himself For the rest of this review it will probably be enough to suggest you read it if you haven t and include some quotes from Lord Henry
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love it is the faithless who know love s tragedies
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful
You are a wonderful creation You know more than you think you know just as you know less than you want to know
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible
Young men want to be faithful and are not old men want to be faithless and cannot
I always like to know everything about my new friends and nothing about my old ones
She behaves as if she was beautiful Most American women do It is the secret of their charm
I can sympathize with everything except suffering
Humanity takes itself too seriously It is the world s original sin If the cave man had known how to laugh History would have been different
Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days Duchess he asked looking at her across the table
A great many I fear she cried Then commit them over again he said gravely To get back one s youth
one has merely to repeat one s follies
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
Punctuality is the thief of time
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing
My dear boy no woman is a genius Women are a decorative sex They never have anything to say but they say it charmingly Women represent the triumph of matter over mind just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals
Men marry because they are tired women because they are curious both are disappointed
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 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
You will always be fond of me I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit
Women love us for our defects If we have enough of them they will forgive us everything even our intellects
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one s back that are absolutely and entirely true
Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved
To be popular one must be a mediocrity
It is better to be beautiful than to be good But it is better to be good than to be ugly
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on
Anybody can be good in the country
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world except take exercise get up early or be respectable
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame
>> Beware
This is a perfect example of why Speculative Fiction exists To allow us to see deeper into the human soul than we could otherwise Although this book was short it took me a good week to read I kept having to put it down after a chapter or two so I could read something else Every word seemed to suck me in while not making me want to read another sentence at the same time I guess the fact that I was also reading Milton s Paradise Lost at the same time as Dorian Gray doesn t help cut down the long internal debates Dorian Gray forced into my skull Either way this novel is a must read for anyone who has even thought that self examination is a part of what it means to be alive But beware This book packs a punch
>> So Pretty
I haven t actually had a chance to read the book yet but there are plenty of reviews out there I can say that aesthetically this is a beautiful edition I hope that penguin continues to reprint classic novels in this style
