""The Picture of Dorian Gray"

[fiefoe]

The idealist, turning ugly:

• He played with the idea and grew willful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox.
• smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes
• People like you--the willful sunbeams of life--
• I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
• Even if I could do it, it would be profanation for me to play at being in love. You have made me see that." He flung himself down on the sofa and turned away his face. "You have killed my love," he muttered.
• Because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away.
• But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul?
• "I must sow poppies in my garden," sighed Dorian.
• This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul.
• I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle.

__ Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.
__ As her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions.
__ those ample architectural proportions that in women who are not duchesses are described by contemporary historians as stoutness

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