Quotation from: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Written by: Oscar Wilde


"So I have murdered Sibyl Vane," said Dorian Gray, half to himself,
"murdered her as surely as if I had cut her little throat
with a knife. Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that.
The birds sing just as happily in my garden. And to-night I am
to dine with you, and then go on to the opera, and sup somewhere,
I suppose, afterwards. How extraordinarily dramatic life is!
If I had read all this in a book, Harry, I think I would have
wept over it. Somehow, now that it has happened actually,
and to me, it seems far too wonderful for tears.
Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written
in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should
have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder,
those white silent people we call the dead? Sibyl! Can she feel,
or know, or listen? Oh, Harry, how I loved her once!
It seems years ago to me now. She was everything to me.
Then came that dreadful night--was it really only last night?--
when she played so badly, and my heart almost broke.
She explained it all to me. It was terribly pathetic.
But I was not moved a bit. I thought her shallow.
Suddenly something happened that made me afraid.
I can't tell you what it was, but it was terrible.
I said I would go back to her. I felt I had done wrong.
And now she is dead. My God! My God! Harry, what shall I do?
You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing
to keep me straight. She would have done that for me.
She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of
her."

PREVIOUS GROUP HOME SITE HOME NEXT
Part of the RabbitHoleResearch Project
Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~