You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 7. Dorian cruelly and brutally casts Sibyl aside in this hurtful, humiliating rant to her backstage after her imperfect performance as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, to which Dorian invited Basil and Lord Henry. Yet only the day before he provessed that he loved Sibyl and wanted to place her on a pedestal of gold. Dorian is showing signs of the kind of shallowness that his mentor Lord Henry is famous for – though ironically Dorian calls Sibyl shallow. This is the critical moment where we witness the start of the corruption of Dorian’s soul, a sign of the effect the malign influence of Lord Henry is having.