Lord Henry's Poison

Lord Henry Wotton is the novel's most seductive voice — a wit who treats life as an aesthetic experiment and morality as a bore. His aphorisms sparkle: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

But Lord Henry never acts on his own philosophy. He preaches sensation while living a safe, conventional life. Dorian is the one who actually tests the theory, with catastrophic results — a portrait of the thinker who corrupts others with ideas he is too cautious to live by himself.