The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we did not dare to yield to.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly-built-up cells in which thought hides itself, and passion has its dreams.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.