So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! Th... - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape (...)"

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More quotes by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"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 had not the courage to yield to."
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"Even things that are true can be proved."
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"I am too fond of reading books to care to write them."
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"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
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"What fire does not destroy, it hardens"
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