Temptation Quotes - Page 16

• Your cable television is experiencing difficulties. Please do not panic. Resist the temptation to read or talk to loved ones. Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of TV radiation have left your genitals withered and useless.

  Matt Groening

  Years, Television, Useless

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• When God has not taken away our trouble or temptation yet, with His grace in our lives, we are content.

  T. B. Joshua

  Taken, Grace, Trouble

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• Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.

  Walter Lippmann

  Stress, Men, Barbarians

  Walter Lippmann (1959). “The Public Philosophy”

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• Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Sea, Bird, Missing

  Benjamin Franklin (2004). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.275, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• Our generation, like the one before us, must choose. Without the threat of the Cold War, without the pain of economic ruin, without the fresh memory of World War II's slaughter, it is tempting to pursue our private agendas -- to simply sit back and let history unfold. We must resist the temptation.

  William J. Clinton

  Pain, Memories, War

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• Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Lying, Passion, Waiting

  Evelyn Waugh (1983). “The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh”, Methuen

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• The temptations to wrong are many; they spring out of a corrupt nature.

  Matthew Simpson

  Spring

  Matthew Simpson (1885). “Sermons”

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• It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it.

  Bob Newhart

  Decision, Comedian, Way

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• The temptation to vivify the tale and make it walk abroad on its own legs is hard to deny.

  Gelett Burgess

  Legs, Deny, Tales

  Gelett Burgess (1916). “The Romance of the Commonplace”

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• Liberals want to set up social welfare committees to help whites and West Indians love each other in Birmingham. But all such efforts are doomed to failure. For the strong the weak are just too much of a temptation; and in all fairness it seems to me quite wicked for black people to have tempted the powerful with so much powerless-ness for so long. The obvious answer is to redress this imbalance in power.

  Lewis Nkosi

  Strong, Powerful, Long

  Lewis Nkosi (1983). “Home and exile and other selections”, Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd

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• Where faith is not continually kept in motion and exercised, it weakens and decreases, so that it must indeed vanish; and yet we do not see nor feel this weakness ourselves, except in times of need and temptation, when unbelief rages too strongly; and yet for that very reason faith must have temptations in which it may battle and grow.

  Martin Luther

  Faith, Battle, Weakness

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• We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.

  Richard Rohr

  Catholic, Ego, Littles

  "Preparing for Christmas" by Fr. Richard Rohr, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 6, 2012.

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• I think when you're trying to produce a relationship on screen that doesn't actually exist, perhaps sometimes there's a temptation to look at each other more, to touch each other more...

  Paul Bettany

  Thinking, Trying, Looks

  "Paul Bettany: Playing Darwin with Creation". Interview with Adam Rutherford, www.theguardian.com. February 11, 2009.

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• I'd never say no to surgery in the future, because I feel like, as I get older, I'm going to face temptation more.

  Marcia Cross

  Faces, Surgery, Feels

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• Ten thousand million nightmares, temptation by the score, I used to get so high, and still I wanted more. You think my time is wasted in search of who I am, I tried so hard to kill the boy inside the man.

  Ozzy Osbourne

  Boys, Men, Thinking

  Song: Can You Hear Them?, Album: Down To Earth

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• From the cradle to the grave, temptations all around. But no matter how good the fix, its gonna take you down.

  Keith Urban

  Evil, Matter, Cradle

  Song: You're Not My God, Album: Golden Road

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• If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Business, Might, Chance

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.135, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.

  James Madison

  War, Men, Would Be

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1826). “The Federalist: On the New Constitution”, p.550

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• If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.

  Hans Kung

  Children, Wife, Would Be

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• As for writing about temptation, there's no drama without temptation, and no novel without drama.

  Tom Perrotta

  Drama, Writing, Novel

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• There is temptation to place too much importance on those things that you're meant to do, and not on to little everyday happinesses. I think if you do what makes you happy on a daily basis, your days gather into years and you have a happy life. I don't want to think too far ahead. I want to make sure that I enjoy tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. And we'll see what happens.

  Guy Garvey

  Happy Life, Thinking, Years

  "Guy Garvey interview: 'I still think wistfully about my hedonistic years'". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. March 1, 2014.

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• What the members of the Church need, more than anything else, are strong testimonies of Jesus Christ and the gospel He restored. They need to know. And they need to know that they know. This is the best protection against the tsunami of temptations and the waves of immorality that crash against us. Perhaps this is just another reason why the first principle of the gospel is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ!

  John Bytheway

  Jesus, Strong, Church

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• Jesus's first temptation was to be relevant: to turn stones into bread. Oh, how often I wished I could do that!

  Mike Ditka

  Jesus, Ministry, Stones

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• If the 'self-life' is supreme, Satan does not have to be invited in. The lines are already set for the 'electric' current to flow. Satan is master of ceremonies, though he be apparently non-existent.

  F. Huegel

  Self, Lines, Flow

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• Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Armor, Obscurity, World

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