Quotes About Temptation

There's too much lime in the world and not enough gin. —Frank O'Hara, from "Poem," The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara . (University of California Press March 31, 1995)

Sin is the Monster we love to deny. It is crouching at the door and it wants you, but you must overcome it.

Sin is the monster we love to deny. It can stalk us, bite a slice out of our lives, return again and again, and even as we bleed and hobble, we prefer to believe nothing has happened. In Jesus Christ we are forgiven and empowered to overcome sin...but toying with an animal that is actually toying with us is a sure way to lose part of ourselves.

She did things to me that would lure a hummingbird from a hibiscus and make a bulldog break his chain. I

Search fearlessly for every sin, for out of sin comes joy.

The contemplative life remains freely available to us through our choices—what we read and buy, how we commit to leisure and self-improvement, the passing over of empty temptation, our preservation of the quiet spaces, an intentional striving to become the masters of our mastery.

A bargain is something you don't need at a price you can't resist.

Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values — and witnesses.

What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don't want to discourage it completely.

Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I'll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.

Poor Cecil. It's hard to be a devil of a fellow in these modern times. No stagecoaches to hold up. No princesses to rescue. Just Petey Todd to escort, while the easy, expert fellow walks the pretty girl home.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin impatience. Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise because of impatience we cannot return.

Truth is a great flirt.

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

Temptations are a compliment to our power, not our weakness.

In our moments of sober thought we all realize that booms are bad things, not good. But nearly all of us have a secret hankering for another one. " Another little orgy wouldn't do us any harm," is the feeling that persists both downtown and up.

Valence passa une main sur ses yeux et quitta la fenêtre. -L'alcool est là, lui dit Néron en tendant les bras.

Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled.

Our goal is to learn how to resist temptation, but desperate attempts at iron willpower can produce frustration and disappointment. What's needed is watchfulness—in Greek, nepsis. Since temptation begins with a thought, we need to start noticing the thoughts that appear in our minds, that weave around and through, seeking a weak spot. The idea is to notice them early, and shut them off. Block them before they get stronger and harder to resist.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Shannon's fingers itched to smash the man in the face. Inside his head he kept telling himself, Keep cool, baby, absolutely cool.

A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it.

It is always tempting to wonder what would have happened if … or if not. Usually it is a futile exercise, for what might have been is the greatest of all the mysteries.

I could kill that guy and eat it afterwards...