Quotes About Temptation

Temptation isn't a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you're free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it.

Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.

If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.

I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

Love sinners, but hate their deeds, and do not disdain sinners for their failings, so that you yourself do not fall into the temptation in which they abide... Do not be angry at anyone and do not hate anyone, neither for their faith, nor for their shameful deeds... Do not foster hatred for the sinner, for we are all guilty... Hate his sins, and pray for him, so that you may be made like unto Christ, who had no dislike for sinners, but prayed for them.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

If you don't want temptation to follow you, don't act as if you are interested.

Virtue, which breaks through opposition and all temptation can remove, most shines, and most is acceptable above.

Temptation gains power where we see it prevail in others we know and we express neither shock or hatred of them and their ways nor pity and prayer for their deliverance.

For anyone who lives in the oak-and-maple area of New England, there is a perennial temptation to plunge into a purple sea of adjectives about October.

I am human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved.

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Temptation provokes me to look upward to God.

I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. … The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius.

We are not made up only of our light and happiness but also of darkness and sorrow. To deny the darkness of yourself is to deny half of who you are, and when you love, truly love, you need to love the whole person not just the part that smiles and waves, but the part that thinks murderous thoughts and knows that pain is both pleasure and temptation, but still thinks puppies are really cute.

It is no wonder you are tempted; on the contrary, it would be something new if you were not, because man's life is nothing but temptation, and no one is exempt from it, especially those who have given themselves to God; his own Son even passed through this trial. But if it is necessary for everyone, it is also a source of merit for those to whom God grants the grace of turning all things to good, as you do.

There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting moment.

The whole mystery of temptation is to have sins suggested to us, and to be swept after them by a sudden enthusiasm, which sometimes feels as strong as the Spirit of God ever made in us the enthusiasm for virtue.

Have you been tormented with fears and doubts? Bombarded with temptation to sin? Try praising the Lord, and watch Satan flee.

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

Where faith is not continually kept in motion and exercised, it weakens and decreases, so that it must indeed vanish; and yet we do not see nor feel this weakness ourselves, except in times of need and temptation, when unbelief rages too strongly; and yet for that very reason faith must have temptations in which it may battle and grow.

A lot of my music is just self-observation. Like telling you, "Oh man. What did I just do? How much did I just pay for this chain? Why did I do that? Wait a minute." Let me talk about that. Or like, the temptation. Let me talk about that. Let me observe myself.

wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to temptation!

The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims.

For me, temptation is life and I have a gargantuan appetite for everything.

Unwillingness to accept God's 'way of escape' from temptation frightens me - what a rebel yet resides within.

Philosophers should resist the temptation to be publicly virtuous. Given an unjust society, from the vantage of what counts as the public good, they are corrupters, not edifiers. The desire to be seen to be virtuous, to make a positive contribution, is a deleterious symptom of professionalization. Philosophy's social utility is an ersatz for its duty to mount challenges to the entire social order.

Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists.

The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses--in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto.

There is no point in praying for victory over temptation if we are not willing to make a commitment to say no to it.

I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

I won't stick around to see how much temptation I can take. God is not impressed with my ability to stand up to sin. He is more impressed by the obedience I show when I run from it.

The noble temptation to see too much in everything.

I didn't want to think about a project that I couldn't finish. That's a kind of temptation. One has to realize one's limitations. Why kid yourself? 

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

When your goal is to build people up, to make them feel better, to share in their joy, you too reap the rewards of their positive feelings. The next time you have the chance to correct someone, even if their facts are a little off, resist the temptation. Instead, ask yourself, "What do I really want out of this interaction?" Chances are, what you want is a peaceful interaction where all parties leave feeling good. Each time you resist 'being right,' and instead choose kindness, you'll notice a peaceful feeling within.

The only thing I can't resist is temptation.

Like Jesus, we can decide, daily or instantly, to give no heed to temptation (see D&C 20:22). We can respond to irritation with a smile instead of scowl, or by giving warm praise instead of icy indifference. By our being understanding instead of abrupt, others, in turn, may decide to hold on a little longer rather than to give way. Love, patience, and meekness can be just as contagious as rudeness and crudeness.

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

Temptation and testing (or a trial) are two sides of the same coin. Satan uses an occasion or a person to tempt us to fall; God uses the same to try us and make us stronger.

I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness. What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad. It was a very strong temptation.

She does not want to feel even the faintest temptation to call his mobile number, as she had done obsessively for the first year after his death so she could hear his voice on the answering service. Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day. But today, the Anniversary of the day he died, is a day when all bets are off.

I resisted the temptation to turn around and stick out my tongue in derision at Beliquose. After all, there was no telling when or if we should meet again, and I certainly did not need him saying, 'Ah yes, Poe, the fellow whose trespasses i could have forgiven in their entirety... except for the tongue thing. Yes, for that, you must surely die.'