Quotes About Temptation

The mystics and the churchmen talk about throwing off his body and its desires, being no longer a slave to the flesh. They don't say that through the flesh we are set free. That our desire for another will lift us out of ourselves more cleanly than anything divine.

I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the sevice. I'm never tempted by God, but I like his trappings.

I didn't know quite what fornicating was, but I had read about it in Deuteronomy, and I knew it was a sin. But why was it so noisy? Most sins you did quietly so as not to get caught.

Can love really belong to the demon?

The third is to refuse the passion as one might sensibly refuse a leopard in the house, however tame it might seem at first. You might reason that you can easily feed a leopard and that your garden is big enough, but you will know in your dreams at least that no leopard is ever satisfied with what it is given. After nine nights must come ten and every desperate meeting only leaves you desperate for another. There is never enough to eat, never enough garden for your love.

Can I have some fish-bait?' I asked.

I sat at the back, listening to the music or mumbling through the service. I'm never tempted by God, but I like his trappings.

If the demons lived anywhere it was here.

He hates for hate's sake. There are people like that. People who have everything. Money, power, sex. When they have everything they play for more sophisticated stakes than the rest of us. There are no thrills left to that man. The sun will never rise and delight him. he will never be lost in a strange town and forced to ask his way. I can't buy him. I can't tempt him. He wants a life for a life.

It is pity in which the state of nature takes the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the added advantage that no one there is tempted to disobey its gentle voice.

One always wants what is good for oneself, but one does not always see it. The people is never corrupted, but it is often fooled, and only then does it appear to want what is bad.

One advantage resulting from good actions is that they elevate the soul to a disposition of attempting still better; for such is human weakness, that we must place among our good deeds an abstinence from those crimes we are tempted to commit.

The sophism that ruined me is the one made by the majority of men, who complain about lacking strength when it is already too late to make use of it. [...] Virtue costs us only through our own fault, and if we always wanted to be wise, we would rarely need to be virtuous. But inclinations that would be easy to overcome sweep us away without resistance: we give way to slight temptations whose danger we scorn

Luxury] corrupts both rich and poor, the rich by having it and the poor by wanting it.

An isolated individual knows well enough that alone he cannot set fire to a palace or loot a shop, and should he be tempted to do so, he will easily resist the temptation. Making part of a crowd, he is conscious of the power given him by number, and it is sufficient to suggest to him ideas of murder or pillage for him to yield immediately to temptation.

Everyone has some darkness inside. It's like a hungry creature. It wants and wants and wants with a terrible power. And the more you give it, the bigger and hungrier it gets.

There is so much darkness in Ember, Lina. It's not just outside, it's inside us, too. Everyone has some darkness inside. It's like a hungry creature. It wants and wants and wants with a terrible power. And the more you give it, the bigger and hungrier it gets.

Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always a person at the table...No, really, I couldn't...Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn't a person with discipline, that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy.

cannot avoid the temptation of wondering whether there is any other industry in this country which seeks to presume so completely to give the customer what he does not want.

This rat was not just eating the sugar. He was bathing in it, wallowing in it, positively luxuriating in it, his flickering tail hanging over the side of the bowl, flinging sugar across the table.

A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.

Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you're thirsty -- that would be very much too simple! If you didn't harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you'd run the risk of forgetting yourself.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Satan turned Eve's eye to the apple, Achan's eye to the wedge of gold, Ahab's eye to Naboth's vineyard, and then what work did he make with them!