The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

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. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!”

I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”

And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.

For these things, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne.