Oscar Wilde can’t tell us with words that Dorian Gray is a full out twink so he compares him to Ganymede and Antinous and hopes we know enough Roman gay history to understand.
“Basil would have helped him to resist Lord Henry’s influence, and the still more poisonous influences that came from his own temperament. The love that he bore him—for it was really love—had something noble and intellectual in it. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the senses, and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michael Angelo had known, and Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it was too late now.”
— Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (via flatteredhim)
the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde; dorian gray
“What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
It really amuses me when people take Dorian Gray quotes out of context to make them seem cute and uplifting and inspirational when nine times out of ten they’re actually Lord Henry manipulating Dorian further down the path of destruction
