The Picture of Dorian Gray 3

"The same nervous staccato laugh broke from her thin lips"(49).
Staccato- shortened, detached, abruptly disconnected

"with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins"(52).
Sordid- morally ignoble or base; vile



"Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing"(50).

Harry makes the point that today people are very absorbed by material things. People are constantly buying things and more worried about material goods than anything else. Most members of society could tell you how much everything costs or what objects give a sense of social status, mainly the prices of any material object. However, people have become so absorbed with physical possessions, they do not recognize life's simple pleasures. People can no longer see the value of good deeds or simple beauty when they are too wrapped up in possessions.



"the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or the lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect-- simply a confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up"(53).

Here Harry says that faithfulness is for shallow people. However, he does admit that once it is considered further there is some logic behind it. He sees only two reasons that a person would be faithful. He admits that many people are faithful because simply they do not want someone else to be with the person they have. They hang on to that person and are faithful to them not because they could not live without them, but because they couldn't live with someone else being with them. His second reason for fidelity is that one who is faithful is simply lazy or unimaginative. They do not wish to seek something or someone different or better than what they have, or they cannot picture that there is anything else better out there. He sees being faithful as accepting that one has to remain loyal because they cannot obtain anything better.