Meaning

Wilde's line turns conventional wisdom on its head. The ordinary advice is to resist temptation through willpower or discipline. Wilde proposes the opposite: that resistance itself is what keeps a temptation alive and powerful, giving it a hold over you, while actually yielding dissolves its grip. Whether read as a sincere philosophical observation or as deliberate provocation, the line challenges the assumption that self-denial is always a form of strength. It suggests instead that it can sometimes be a form of self-deception.

Context

This line appears in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde's only novel, published in 1890. It is delivered by Lord Henry Wotton, the charming and morally slippery aristocrat whose influence draws the young and impressionable Dorian Gray toward a life of pleasure and excess. Lord Henry speaks in aphorisms throughout the book, and many of his most memorable lines are designed to sound witty and liberating while actually pointing toward ruin. The novel itself is deeply ambivalent about the philosophy Lord Henry promotes.

About the author

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer born in Dublin in 1854 who became one of the defining literary voices of the late Victorian era in Britain. He was celebrated for his plays, his essays, his fairy tales, and his extraordinary gift for the well-turned phrase. The Picture of Dorian Gray remains his only novel and one of the enduring works of English literature. Wilde's life ended in Paris in 1900 following a period of imprisonment and exile, but his work has never gone out of fashion.