Quotes About Temptation

Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

In the words of Phillips Brooks: Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer.

it is the nature of avarice to mislead.

Wanting is natural, and may succeed or fail without wrong. Say covet, rather. To covet is to desire something which should not be given.

desire is the killer of reason.

We're like the comic strip character Hagar the Horrible who, when asked which he'd choose, power, gold, or true happiness, chose power: "With power, I could get the gold, and then I'd be happy." We find Hagar's idea humorous because we know better. Yet most of the time we ignore this very knowledge, and act (or at least think) much like Hagar.

Ale: Are you manipulating me again? T.C.: Try not to fall for it. I dare you.

There's nothing wrong with stretching the truth. We stretch taffy, and that just makes it more delicious.

Karen Abbott reports that the Everleigh also offered sexual delicacies that weren't available elsewhere—"French" style, for instance, commonly known today as oral sex.

Could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed?

Glaucon's story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But Paul Feldman sides with Socrates and Adam Smith—for he knows that the answer, at least 87 percent of the time, is yes.

Or, as W. C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

W. C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

Whatever the incentive, whatever the situation,dishonest people will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary.

But, seriously, when in history did fear of death ever come between a man and his drugs?

At every moment we choose, consciously or unconsciously, between good things now and better things later.

Cheesecake packs a sensual wallop unlike anything in the natural world because it is a brew of megadoses of agreeable stimuli which we concocted for the express purpose of pressing our pleasure buttons

Odyssean self-control [...] is more effective than the strenuous exertion of willpower, which is easily overmatched in the moment by temptation.

The explanations may help us understand the parts of the brain that made a behavior tempting, but they say nothing about the other parts of the brain (primarily in the prefrontal cortex) that could have inhibited the behavior by anticipating how the community would respond to it. [...] Why should we discard our lever on the system for inhibition just because we are coming to understand the system for temptation?

The psychologist Walter Mischel captured the conflict in an agonizing choice he gave four-year-olds in a famous 1972 experiment: one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in fifteen minutes.15 Life is a never-ending gantlet of marshmallow tests, dilemmas that force us to choose between a sooner small reward and a later large reward.

Watch a movie now or pass a course later; buy a bauble now or pay the rent later; enjoy five minutes of fellatio now or an unblemished record in the history books later.

Beelzebug n. Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness.