Sentence No. 3 · 30 March 2026
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde — The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The infinitive phrase "to yield to it" is the subject complement: it completes the frame "The only way to get rid of a temptation is." Whenever a sentence opens with "The only way to" plus a verb, expect an "is to" phrase to close it.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 5 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A witty aristocrat holds court at a garden party, dispensing a philosophy his audience finds dangerous and irresistible. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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