Quotes About Temptation

The devil and temptations also afford us occasion to learn and understand the Scriptures, by experience and practice. Without these we should never understand them, however diligently we read and listened to them.

God indeed tempteth no man; but yet we ask, in this petition, that he would keep and preserve us, lest the devil, the world, and our own flesh delude and draw us away from the true faith, and throw us into superstition, distrust, despair, and other grievous sins and wickedness; and that, if we should be tempted therewith even to the highest degree, we still may conquer, and at last triumph over them.

Any teaching that sets self-love as the highest good is false teaching, and we are susceptible to it because it appeals to that deep yearning for affirmation we feel at our very core. That's why it hooks us.

Self-indulging is how we worship the idol of comfort, and orienting our lives on whatever promises to provide it in the fastest, easiest, most enjoyable way is how we bow down. As with any kind of idol, the appeal to immediate gratification is why self-indulgence snares us.

The devil is stronger and smarter than we are; so arguing with him won't help us very much and can actually enhance our difficulty. Jesus has provided us with the way to resist…there are Scripture passages to refute every one of [the devil's] lies. Immersing ourselves in the Bible is one of the primary ways we keep, or guard, our hearts.

But no matter how clearly I saw what I was doing, I would go on doing it, as though I simply allowed my shame to sit there alongside my need to do it, one separate from the other. I often chose to do the wrong thing and feel bad about it rather than to do the right thing, if the wrong thing was what I wanted.

alcoholic if necessary

Just as it is hard for us, in our garden, to stop weeding, because there is always another weed there in front of us, it may be hard for her to stop grazing, because there are always a few more shoots of fresh grass just ahead of her.

Called by the sirens and followed by an albatross.

[Beauty is] a delicate bait with a deadly hook; a sweet panther with a devouring paunch, a sour poison in a silver pot.

Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.

Every yielding to temptation is a hindrance, not a help, to moral development; but every temptation offers what, rightly employed, is an indispensable means of moral development. For all moral development is through temptation to virtue.

There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation.

The mother who tries to keep her child away from all temptation simply prepares the boy for a terrible fall when he gets old enough to leave the home. It is not by taking away the bonds, it is by giving strength to the man that he may break the bonds, that he is redeemed. Every man is like a Samson bound by his enemies, and he must acquire the strength within himself to break them.

An untempted soul may be innocent, but cannot be virtuous, for virtue is the choice of right when wrong presses itself upon us and demands our choosing.

We think if we can only take the temptation away from men, men will be virtuous. We are mistaken. Men are made virtuous by confronting temptation.

God also puts His people in the middle of things for the same reason that He put the tree of temptation in the middle of the garden--so that our choice to follow Him would be a conscious, daily one. Every time we publicly choose to live for Christ, He is glorified.

I need to stay continually watchful, prepared with the whole armor of God if I want to combat the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

She comes to naught, my dear one, she comes to naught, all that there business. What the hell, maybe twice in your life you have yourself a whore of a good time, and then you spend every night of the rest of your life trying to get that good time back. But she comes to naught.

Is there an aphrodisiac more powerful than forbidden fruit hanging just out of reach?

God, I want you,' he breathed, and Bernadette's throat closed, trapping her breath, while every last ounce of strength drained out of her and left her with knees turned suddenly to rubber. 'I've never said that to a nun before,' he mused wryly. 'But then I've never met a nun like you. I doubt anyone has. What business has a woman Like you got being a nun, for the love of God!

Stanton stood behind her, dressed in black, his shaggy blond hair hanging in his eyes. He was handsome in a dangerous way that made her want to stare forever in his intense blue eyes.

His mother had often talked about the way certain books called you when you were really engrossed in them and to put them down.

My head aches, my eyes burn, my arms and legs have given up, and my face in the mirror has a grayish cast. The bed, across the room, calls in its unmistakable lover's croon, Come to me, come, only I can make you truly happy, oh, how happy I'll make you, don't resist, remember how you moan with pleasure the instant we touch.....