"I have put my genius into my life," declared Oscar Wilde, adding, "I have put only my talent into my works." This gift edition of the renowned poet and playwright's aphorisms draws upon both realms. Hundreds of sparkling jests and epigrams include quips from Wilde's personal letters and conversations as well as his fiction, essays, lectures, and plays. The most comprehensive collection of Wilde's witticisms, it will delight both longtime fans and new readers.

Amusing, thought-provoking epigrams, aphorisms, and other jests from the plays, essays, and lively conversation of Oscar Wilde offer a feast of humorous and profound quips. Nearly 400 quotes.

Oscar Wilde is one of the most quoted and quotable men in history. He once boasted that he could talk spontaneously on any subject, a claim effortlessly borne out by the range and scope of the examples collected in this book. It is an entertaining, instructive, and revealing look at a man who is unlikely ever to be forgotten. "Oscar Wilde," wrote Richard Ellmann, "we have only to hear the great name to anticipate that what will be quoted as his will surprise and delight us. His wit is an agent of renewal, as pertinent now as a hundred years ago."

More than 1,000 ripostes, paradoxes, wisecracks: "Work is the curse of the drinking classes," "I can resist everything except temptation," etc.

I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation is a celebration of the virtuoso of well-turned phrases and the master of the studied insult - Oscar Wilde.

'I have nothing to declare', Wilde once told an American customs official, 'except my genius'. A socialite, a wit, a man who flaunted convention and was unafraid to shock, Oscar Wilde was a great writer and a great man. This new collection of wit and wisdom demonstrates the brilliance of his vision, the audacity of his style. Such is the scope of the material, it brings to life the Wilde of great feeling as well as the Wilde of great art.

Oscar Wilde never wrote a last testament during his isolation in Paris. This book takes the known facts about Oscar Wilde and converts them into a fictional portrait of the artist and memoir of a life of great contrast - a career which ended with a catastrophic fall from public favour.