Lord Henry Wotton Quotes

We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry is an advocate of sin and suggests that self-denial only serves to heighten the desire for what we deny ourselves. This makes us brood and poisons us. He sees the commission of sin as a form of purification, for when we sin we are done with it. All that remains is the memory of a pleasure or regret.

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.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry’s advice to Dorian sums up his hedonistic views on temptations of the flesh, which he sees as all good and should be indulged. Wilde is of course speaking through Lord Henry here, when he attacks the "monstrous laws" and things "forbidden." His outrage is at the confines of the restrictive Victorian morality of his day, when consenting homosexual sex was forbidden and was a crime that could land you in jail. Wilde himself was sentenced to two years of hard labor in jail because of his homosexuality, which inspired his famous poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."

Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Wilde uses many metaphors in his novel in order to enhance the vitality of the story. They include two here used by Lord Henry, which compare Dorian’s freshness of youth to a red rose and his boyhood purity to a white rose. But Lord Henry wants to win Dorian over as a convert to hedonism and so taps into his potential for pleasure seeking. He speaks of passions and desire which make Dorian afraid and thoughts that give him terror. Henry wants the boy to throw off the shackles of conventional morality and give into these.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry is speaking to Dorian on sensorial experiences – this belief lies at the heart of Henry’s new hedonism. Just before this quote we read: "Lord Henry went out to the garden and found Dorian Gray burying his face in the great cool lilac-blossoms, feverishly drinking in their perfume as if it had been wine." Here Dorian is shown burying his head in lilac blossoms, drinking in their fragrance, suggesting that he is still someting of an innocent. But Henry sees this as a challenge to be overcome. The line about curing the soul with the senses foreshadows that Dorian will because of Henry’s influence abandon his innocence and embark on a life of sensual pleasure and vice with abandon.

There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Dorian gray is beginning to come under the spell of Lord Henry and cannot help but like him. As Henry speaks, Dorian uses a simile to compare the young aristocrat’s seductive moving hands to a flower and to music, suggesting that Henry’s preaching is making an impression on Dorian.

He had known Basil Hallward for months, but the friendship between them had never altered him. Suddenly there had come some one across his life who seemed to have disclosed to him life’s mystery. And, yet, what was there to be afraid of? He was not a schoolboy or a girl. It was absurd to be frightened.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Dorian says that his months long friendship with Basil had never altered him. But all of a sudden he is feeling the strong influence of Lord Henry, someone who has revealed to him "life’s mystery." Dorian appears on the brink of some transformative change and admits that he is frightened.

You have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having…Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry spells out to Dorian the transient nature of his youthful beauty. He doesn’t hold back in letting him know that some day his beautiful face will become old and wrinkled and ugly.

Beauty is a form of genius – is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry says this to Dorian. Henry is the greatest facilitator of Dorian’s vanity, elevating his physical beauty to something above genius.

The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they can quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will suffer horribly.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry continues to feed Dorian’s vanity about his physical attractiveness. He talks about the fleeting nature of beauty, warning that when his youth goes his beauty will go with it. Dorian does have such fears, and in a bid to preserve his beauty at all costs they will drive him to barter his soul for eternal youth. Lilies and roses are metaphors for Dorian’s beauty and his ability to love.

Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing…A new Hedonism – that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry targets Dorian with the aim of making him the symbol of his "new Hedonism." Pleading with Dorian to make the most of his youth, he uses a metaphor to urge him him spend the "gold" of his days by living a wonderful life to the full and enjoying new sensations.

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.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. While Dorian Gray is known for his breathtaking youthful handsomeness, he is very conscious of losing all of that one day. He agrees with Lord henry that youth is the only thing worth having, and vows to kill himself before old age steals that from him.

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 3. When Lord Henry says this, he fits his own description well. For Henry ironically practices his own brand of philantrophy, but it is intellectual rather than economic. He spends countless words and speeches influencing Dorian and others he meets about his "new Hedonism." This, despite the fact that he hypocritically says influencing people is immoral.

Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow…There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 3. Lord Henry reflects on how fascinating it is to influence Dorian, whom he admits playing like an "exquisite violin." What appears to be a growing friendship between Henry and Dorian is nothing more than an exercise by Henry in the corruption of innocence – Henry is bent on projecting his hedonistic soul into Dorian and turning the impressionable young man into an unremitting follower of pleasure.

Yes; he would try to be to Dorian Gray what, without knowing it, the lad was to the painter who had fashioned the wonderful portrait. He would seek to dominate him – had already, indeed, half done so. He would make that wonderful spirit his own. There was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 3. Lord Henry has learned of the tragic fate of Dorian’s parents – his beautiful mother eloped with a penniless man who was lured into a duel and killed, his mother dying a year later. With Dorian’s lack of family, Henry decides to step in and mold and shape him into someone of his making, just like Basil turned Dorian’s physical beauty into a work of art.
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