Dorian Gray Mortality Quotes

There is no one with whom I would not change places, Harry. Don’t laugh like that. I am telling you the truth. The wretched peasant who has just died is better off than I am. I have no terror of Death. It is the coming of Death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air around me.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 18. Metaphorical language is used with powerful effect ("monstrous wings" and "leaden air") to describe Dorian’s escalating paranoia and his terror at the coming of death since he saw the face of the hunter-avenger James Vane in his window.

Upstairs, in his own room, Dorian Gray was lying on a sofa, with terror in every tingling fiber of his body. Life had suddenly become too hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild animal, had seemed to him to prefigure death for himself also.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 18. Dorian fears that death is coming for him. So he becomes more and more anxious and terrified over every little thing. He feels the death of the man in a shooting accident – James Vane, thought Dorian doesn’t know this yet – is foreshadowing of his own death.

A cry of joy broke from his lips. The man who had been shot in the thicket was James Vane. He stood there for some minutes looking at the dead body. As he rode home, his eyes were full of tears, for he knew he was safe.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 18. The chapter ends with huge relief for Dorian, who has been panic-stricken over James Vane’s threat of revenge against him for Sibyl’s suicide. The man killed in the earlier shooting accident is Vane, Dorian is now safe.

"Because," said Lord Henry, passing beneath his nostrils the gilt trellis of an open vinaigrette box, "one can survive everything nowadays except that. Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away."

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 19. Lord Henry reply, asked by Dorian why he hates death – the only one thing that terrifies Henry. The wit and humor of Oscar Wilde are unparalleled in literature and real life and quite a lot is channeled through the character of Henry – "You cut life to pieces with your epigrams," Dorian tells him in Chapter 8.

I would say, my dear fellow, that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 19. This is Lord Henry’s reply when during a discussion on Basil’s disappearance Dorian asks Henry what he would say if he told him he had murdered Basil. Henry accuses Dorian of playing a character part that doesn’t suit him. He doesn’t believe Dorian has it in him to murder, and claims that only the lower classes would commit such a terrible crime as murder. He even apologizes for hurting Dorian’s vanity. This passage is ironic because we know that Dorian, who comes from the wealthy classes, has murdered Basil.

Alan Campbell had shot himself one night in his laboratory, but had not revealed the secret that he had been forced to
know…his suicide had been his own act. He had chosen to do it. It was nothing to him.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 20. Dorian’s selfishness leads to the scientist Campbell’s death. Having blackmailed him into disposing of Basil Hallward’s body after Dorian murdered Hallward, the scientist shoots himself in his laboratory "without revealing the secret that he had been forced to know." But Dorian typically refuses to accept any responsibility for the suicide – as he did Sibyl’s. There is no remorse from Dorian and so there will be no redemption for him.
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