The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. 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.
– Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2. Lord Henry’s advice to Dorian sums up his hedonistic views on temptations of the flesh, which he sees as all good and should be indulged. Wilde is of course speaking through Lord Henry here, when he attacks the "monstrous laws" and things "forbidden." His outrage is at the confines of the restrictive Victorian morality of his day, when consenting homosexual sex was forbidden and was a crime that could land you in jail. Wilde himself was sentenced to two years of hard labor in jail because of his homosexuality, which inspired his famous poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."