Quotes About Temptation

And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

Why do we have this desire to tease the innocent? Is it envy?

Why doesn't hatred kill desire? I would have given anything to sleep. I would have behaved like a schoolboy if I had believed in the possibility of a substitute. But there was a time when I had tried to find a substitute, and it hadn't worked.

I could have waited years, now that I knew the end of the story. I was cold and wet and very happy. I could even look with charity towards the altar and the figure dangling there. She loves us both, I thought, but if there is to be a conflict between an image and a man, I know who will win. I could put my hand on her thigh or my mouth on her breast; he was imprisoned behind the altar and couldn't move to plead his cause.

Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.

Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking, too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?

Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.

I couldn't resist the temptation to tease Pyle - it is, after all, the weapon of weakness and I was weak.

Oh, it's not done,' I said, 'but neither is adultery or theft or running away from the enemy's fire. The not done things are done every day, Henry. It's part of modern life. I've done most of them myself.

I wondered whether she would consent to sleep with me that night if Pyle never came, but I knew that when I had smoked four pipes I would no longer want her.

It is astonishing the sense of innocence that goes with sin--only the hard and careful man and the saint are free of it.

She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape––anywhere––for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.

What was most evil in him needed her: it couldn't get along without goodness.

She was too beautiful to excite me with the idea of accessibility.

Do you think it would be bad for me to have another glass? Vodka has never done anyone any harm.

What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days—and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt...

Why doesn't hatred kill desire?

Such arrogant certainty,' said the serpent with relish. 'How pleasing that is to me. All the very worst sins are accomplished with such certainty: gluttony, wrath, lust… pride. No force in existence can compete with mortals in the grip of certainty.

A couple of pills started me down the Yellow Brick Road. Vodka tonic, double. What's the worst that can happen? I thought. I'll shit myself and choke on my own vomit in the back of a taxi or onstage. At least I'll die with dignity.

Satan cannot create anything; he can only pervert the good creation of God into something sinful.

chocolate sprinkles on rhubarb sauce over vanilla ice cream.

A man walks the straight and narrow all his life; he follows the rules, stays within the lines; then one day he makes a misstep. He crosses a line and sets in motion a chain of events that will take from him everything he has and damn him forever in the eyes of those he loves.

A man lives morally all his life, then in one weak moment commits an act that damns him in his own eyes and threatens his liberty, even his life.