Temptation -To yield or not to yield

McGinty

I'm currently reading 'The picture of Dorian Gray' and read this quote, which personally agree with. Do you agree or not?

"We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to struggle 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 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. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with desire with longing for things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laaws have made monstrous and unlawful".

impr0v

The author might have been referring to (obvious) temptations which aren't of a temporary nature and in that case I would be inclined to his statement. I suppose the trick is knowing which temptations are short-lived and which are unlikely to wane.

I would consider the majority of temptations to be temporary and the willpower required to resist them relatively easy to muster given this knowledge. Once the temptation is resisted, the longings for it pass within a relatively short period of time, and desire moves on to the next temptation.

In the context of a temporary temptation the words would sound to me like those of someone who is unable to resist temptation and is attempting to justify that inability, which he considers to be a weakness, to himself.

Of course, to the person suffering the temptation it is not always easy to discern whether it will last.