Instincts are misleading

"The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars out 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 regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden itself, with desire for what 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. "

The Picture of Dorian Grey

 Oscar Wilde