“Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.”

—  Oscar Wilde , book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his …" by Oscar Wilde?
Oscar Wilde photo
Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Related quotes

Simu Liu photo

“I have days where I really feel sexy and on top of the world, and I have days where I don’t. But more than everything I can be at peace with who I am as a whole—my charisma, my humor, my soul.”

Simu Liu (1989) Chinese-born Canadian actor

"Simu Liu Responds to the Chinese Criticism He Was 'Too Ugly' to Play Shang Chi" in Men's Health (19 May 2021) https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a36447247/simu-liu-china-criticism/

Victor Hugo photo

“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Variant: I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
Source: Les Misérables

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
Deb Caletti photo

“A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

Bertrand Russell photo

“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Bertrand Russell's Best: Silhouettes in Satire (1958), "On Religion".<!--originally taken from What is an Agnostic? (1953).-->
1950s
Context: I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

Miguel de Cervantes photo

“A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Acontece tener un padre un hijo feo y sin gracia alguna, y el amor que le tiene le pone una venda en los ojos para que no vea sus faltas, antes las juzga por discreciones y lindezas y las cuenta a sus amigos por agudezas y donaires.
Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Prologue

Fernando Pessoa photo

“Everyone has his vanity, and each one's vanity is his forgetting that there are others with an equal soul.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 88
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Cada um tem a sua vaidade, e a vaidade de cada um é o seu esquecimento de que há outros com alma igual.

“The light would reach us more quickly in the morning and fade more slowly at night if the whole earth were divided into vast flower beds that called forth the light at dawn and clutched it longer at nightfall. Nature instituted summer for flowers long before man took summer over for his own uses.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

John Constable photo

“My observations on clouds and skies are on scraps and bits of paper, and I have never yet put them together so as to form a lecture, which I shall do.... next summer.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

1836
Quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 37
1830s

Tony Abbott photo

“I probably feel a bit threatened, as so many people do... look, it is a fact of life and I try to treat people as people, and not put them in pigeonholes.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Interview with Liz Hayes for 60 Minutes, when asked how he felt about homosexuality, quoted in Quoted in The Daily Telegraph https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/what-does-abbott-fear-they-might-do-to-him/news-story/ba3ffa814f3fe0be7b28e78cc536e2f7, 8 Mar, 2010.
Leader of the Opposition (2009-2015)

Related topics