Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value.
 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). copy citation

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Author Oscar Wilde
Source The Picture of Dorian Gray
Topic value life
Date 1890
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm

Context

“He had been always enthralled by the methods of natural science, but the ordinary subject-matter of that science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he had begun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others. Human life—that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.” source