Customer Reviews

I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation

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In modern times, it is easy to overlook the contribution made to our heritage by Oscar Wilde. This book goes some way to redressing the balance as it conjures up the wicked wit of Wilde, in a very presentable fashion. Not a book to be read from cover to cover but one to be dipped into very often.

Instead of a collection of Oscar Wilde's idiom like personal remarks, this book is essentially a selection of quotations in his writings, primarily from characters in Dorian Gray, A Woman, The Decay of Lying etc., and the rest from his personal letters. They are brilliant, I must say. However, the absence of the full context did deprive me some interest of reading it. That's my problem, I admit. No matter what, it's quite an intellectual and sensational read. Just one remark: Though there are over 1000 quotations with comprehensive citation of source material, "I can resist everything except temptation" is not there.

As usual in my book reviews, below please find my favorite lines for your reference.

Even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men wnat to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot....
Lord Henry in Dorian Gray

Be careful to choose your enemies well. Friends dont much matter. But the choice of enemies is very important.
Vincent O'Sullivan, Aspects of Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Lord Darlington in Fan

I ruined myself; and .... nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.
Letters

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.
Gilbert in The Critic as Artist

...one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare
With lips of flame and heart of stone.
"Impression du Martin" in World