The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Genuine
Yes. In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Chapter 2, said by Lord Henry Wotton. These are the character’s words, not a statement in Wilde’s own voice.
Found word for word by program in the full text.
- Work
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
- Where
- Chapter 2
- Found at
- Paragraph 122 of the text
Researched by AI; checked by program against the full text on 31 October 2026. Editorial review: pending. How we check
On the page
“Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy,” said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only that a look had come into the lad’s face that he had never seen there before.
[…] But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.1 Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. […]
“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you bewilder me. I don’t know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don’t speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think.”
For nearly ten minutes he stood there, motionless, with parted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly conscious that entirely fresh influences were at work within him. […]
The scene
Lord Henry meets Dorian for the first time in Basil’s studio, although Basil has begged him not to influence the young man. While Dorian poses, Lord Henry sets out his ‘new Hedonism’: self-denial maims us, every stifled impulse poisons the mind, and a man should live out every feeling and dream. The speech overwhelms Dorian, who feels new forces stirring in him; minutes later, in the garden, Lord Henry tells him that only the senses can cure the soul. It is the start of the influence that leads Dorian to cruelty, murder and his own death.
What it means
Lord Henry’s claim is that resisting a desire only makes it fester; giving in ends it. Sin is a single act, refusal a lasting sickness.
Often misread
Widely quoted as Wilde’s own playful licence to indulge. It is the seducer’s speech that sets the novel’s tragedy going: Dorian takes the doctrine literally, and the book shows where it leads. Wilde called the book’s moral, in a letter to the St. James’s Gazette of 27 June 1890 (in Miscellanies), ‘all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment’.
Also shared as
- A misquotationThe only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Common form, without the article.
Topics
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- Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism. Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sources
Cite it
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Chapter 2. Spoken by Lord Henry Wotton. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/only-way-to-get-rid-of-a-temptation/ (31 October 2026).
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