Quotes About Temptation

Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.

A burnt child loves the fire.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

La única manera de librarse de la tentación es ceder ante ella. Si se resiste, el alma enferma, anhelando lo que ella misma se ha prohibido, deseando lo que sus leyes monstruosas han hecho monstruoso e ilegal

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.

I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil, cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.

Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not-there is no weakness in that. There is a horrible, terrible courage. I had that courage.

Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.

It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place

The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.

It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts.

when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

Satan hath power to assume a pleasing form. Them big blue eyes. Knew more ways to turn a man's head than the devil's grandmother. I dont know where they learn it at. Hell, she wasnt but seventeen.

If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking.

The uncle lit up and blew smoke in a thin blue viper's breath toward the window. It coiled and diffused in the yellow light. He smiled. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I quit, he said.

I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics

I hadnt known until that night that at its worst lust could be something close to anguish.

Satan is only interested in your soul. He doesnt give a shit about your welfare otherwise.

Ci sono quattro cose che possono distruggere il mondo, disse. Le donne, il whisky, i soldi e i negri.

Shoo, said the old man. I wouldn't turn Satan away for a drink.