There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
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Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (via paintmysilence)
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There is always something ridiculous about the emotion of people whom one has ceased to love.
Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viola or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
“
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Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (via bookoasis)
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30 Day Book Challenge
Day Eight: Favorite Book Quotes
Pretty much every line Oscar Wilde has ever written.
Also:
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
- James Joyce
The first time I read those words I swear I shivered. He has the most amazing way with words.
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us the impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly, we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us.
