Quotes About Temptation

Sexual overindulgence may not only destroy reason and willpower, but it may also lead to either temporary or permanent mental dysfunction.

Every other animal responds to the call of sex only in "season." Man's inclination is to declare "open season.

Now I am punished by privilege and comfort—and I can't resist comfort.

Poison is drunk in golden cups

In the famous tale by Ahiqar, later picked up by Aesop (then again by La Fontaine), the dog boasts to the wolf all the contraptions of comfort and luxury he has, almost prompting the wolf to enlist. Until the wolf asks the dog about his collar and is terrified when he understands its use. "Of all your meals, I want nothing." He ran away and is still running.*3 The question is: what would you like to be, a dog or a wolf?

people who are otherwise rational engage in smoking or in fights that get them no immediate benefits;

These impulses to buy new things that will eventually lose their novelty

Y entonces, nos sentimos inexplicablemente felices, desmesuradamente felices por ese helado que tomaremos dentro de poco; nos preguntamos: ¿cómo es posible tanta felicidad ante la perspectiva de un helado, en nosotros que somos tan adultos en nuestros vertiginosos pensamientos, que estamos tan extrañamente perdidos en un mundo de sombras?

She had wanted to cough as soon as it occurred to her that she mustn't, and she passed a long hour trying to swallow away the tickle that perversely constricted her throat.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flapped like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moon-driven.

I learned that the temptation to self-betrayal can sometimes be worst with those about whom we care the most. I learned that no amount of admiration for another human being can justify sacrificing one's judgment.

Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.

But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart.

Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin.

A grave and dark-clad company, quoth Goodman Brown.

O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?—such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or

Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!

evil is the nature of mankind.

The besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course—I know not exactly when or where—he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience.

Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea.

These feelings, together with the deep degradation of his mind, made him resolve that no circumstances should again draw him into an axcess of wine.

There is no good on earth; and sun is but a name. Come devil; for to thee is this world given.