Quotation from: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Written by: Oscar Wilde


He felt that the time had really come for making his choice.
Or had his choice already been made? Yes, life had decided
that for him--life, and his own infinite curiosity about life.
Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret,
wild joys and wilder sins--he was to have all these things.
The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame:
that was all.


A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration
that was in store for the fair face on the canvas. Once, in boyish
mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss,
those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him.
Morning after morning he had sat before the portrait wondering at
its beauty, almost enamoured of it, as it seemed to him at times.
Was it to alter now with every mood to which he yielded?
Was it to become a monstrous and loathsome thing, to be hidden
away in a locked room, to be shut out from the sunlight that had
so often touched to brighter gold the waving wonder of its hair?
The pity of it! the pity of it!

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