Quotes About Temptation

Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith - It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

Taking the money from drug operations and all that sort of stuff is something that goes past what most of us in society would expect a policeman should do. That temptation hits the police force at the same time as the temptation to take those drugs that are readily available hits the people on the streets.

No one is so good that he is immune from temptation. We will never be entirely free from it. . . . There is no order so holy, no place so secret where there will be no temptation.

I can resist everything except temptation.

I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless.

The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.

The film The Last Temptation of Christ, no matter what its defenders say, was a slap in the face to Christians everywhere.

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions, and words, and thoughts; daily forgivenesses, unselfishness, kindnesses, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptation, submissiveness under trial. Oh, it is these, like the blending colors in a picture, or the blending notes of music, which constitute the man.

There is a danger in our modern practice of using embedded journalism. As there is less and less money available for journalism to uphold its independence, there is a temptation for people to take short cuts. If this army or that army or this corporation is willing to pay for your flight or your accommodation, then it's much more difficult to tell what the real story might be. I do have a concern about that.

Opportunity may knock only once but temptation leans on the door bell

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force.

Temptation said that we all dream of committing crimes, but that only the unbalanced make that macabre idea a reality.

Christ's whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness — the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God — one long campaign in which the temptation stands out as the first great battle and victory.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway. Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.

The most common trait I have found in all successful people is that they have conquered the temptation to give up.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do in a pressure situation is to allow the tension to persist. The temptation is to make a decision, any decision, even if it is an inferior choice.

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist. ... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement.

There is nothing new about humanism. It is the yielding to Satan's first temptation of Adam and Eve: "Ye shall be as gods." (Gen. 3:5)

I have found that people who can successfully resist temptation invariably lead depressingly stunted lives.

Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go.

Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.

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.

Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect.

When you have overcome one temptation, you must be ready to enter the lists with another. As distrust, in some sense, is the mother of safety, so security is the gate of danger.

Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut.

The silence was always the greates temptation.

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.

We should have a strong president. Strong enough to resist the temptation of taking power that a president shouldn't have.

We've all of us got to meet the devil alone. Temptation is a lonely business.

There's a great temptation to throw things in, as you put it, that you think are neat, or that you have a very clear, specific memory of and think you could do a good job writing about. What I find is that it's like a seed you plant. You can try it, and if it will grow and connect with other ideas in the book, and you can see connections that you can actually realize on the page, then you're allowed to leave it in. But if it just kind of lies there and doesn't really add up to anything or there's no chemistry with everything else going on in the book, then you have to take it out.

Whether something is old-fashioned or not doesn't resolve the question of whether it's true or not. I can see the temptation of simply thinking, 'Well, there's a cultural mainstream which flows neatly in one direction. You just align with it'. And that really won't do.

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.

Even the acceptance of personal responsibility may not overcome the temptation to believe that now is not the time to repent. 'Now' can seem so difficult, and 'later' appear so much easier. The truth is that today is always a better day to repent than any tomorrow.

The danger for any artist whose work is both recognizable and critically acclaimed is complacent repetition - the temptation to churn out easily identifiable, eagerly welcomed, and readily salable designs.

If death itself were to die, would it have a ghost, and would the ghost of death visit the dead in the guise of someone alive, if only to fright them from any temptation to return?

Many flatter themselves and consider themselves to be good, humble, and meek, but they will discover the contrary under temptation. Do not not become despondent in temptations, then, but give all the more thanks to God that He thus brings you to what is hidden in your heart - the knowledge of yourself - and wishes you to be corrected and be saved.

The emphasis of that statement about my temptation to switch to the separatist side in Quebec was that someone who obviously loves Canada with everything he has, has been right here and fights for Canada all the time - for him to say something like that, something must be very wrong with Canada.

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

No temptation can gravitate to a man unless there is that is his heart which is capable of responding to it.

Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis.

It is no credit to me to do right. I am never under any temptation to do wrong!

Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.

When fleeing the scene of temptation, do not leave a forwarding address.