Temptation Quotes - Page 18

• When you get up in the morning, before you suffer yourselves to eat one mouthful of food, call your wife and children together, bow down before the Lord, ask him to forgive your sins, and protect you through the day, to preserve you from temptation and all evil, to guide your steps aright.

  Brigham Young

  Morning, Prayer, Children

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• Is it not a great temptation to be so valiant in imagination and so cowardly in execution?

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Imagination, Execution, Valiant

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• Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation.

  Hannah Arendt

  Country, Men, Law

  "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" by Hannah Arendt, (Ch. VIII), 1963.

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• Not a sorrow, not a burden, not a temptation, not a bereavement, not a disappointment, not a care, not a groan or tear, but has its antidote in God's rich and inexhaustible resources.

  George C. Lorimer

  God, Disappointment, Bereavement

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (p. 282), 1895.

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• [On how she goes about trying to live authentically] Well really listening to my point of view and if I am on a set, say, that doesn't really value a woman's point of view, regardless of how they feel, continuing to give my point of view and try to find a way to be heard and not diminishing myself because other people are diminishing me. Because that, I think, is the worst temptation that, you know, you judge yourself by how others are judging you, and to fall into that trap is to walk into the realm of self-annihilation.

  Jennifer Beals

  Fall, Thinking, Self

  Matthewsplace.com Interview, October 2009.

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• To pray against temptation, and yet rush into occasions, is to thrust your fingers into the fire, and then pray they might not be burnt.

  Thomas Secker

  Fire, Might, Praying

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• I have switched on this modern laptop machine. And I have told myself that I must resist the temptation to start playing solitaire upon it.

  Margaret Drabble

  Machines, Laptops, Modern

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• One great remedy against all manner of temptation, great or small, is to open the heart and lay bare its suggestion, likings, and dislikings before some spiritual adviser; for, . . . the first condition which the Evil One makes with a soul, when he wants to entrap it, is silence.

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Spiritual, Heart, Evil

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• When one's function is to teach the loftiest wisdom, it is difficult to resist the temptation to believe that until you have spoken, nothing has been said.

  Jacques Maritain

  Believe, Said, Function

  Jacques Maritain (2013). “The Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time”, p.147, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Prayer, Singing, Devil

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.123

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• Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions.

  Hannah More

  Christian, Eye, Evil

  William Roberts, Hannah More (1835). “Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More”, p.336

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• A woman flees from temptation, but a man just crawls away from it in the cheerful hope that it may overtake him.

  Helen Rowland

  Men, Cheerful, May

  Helen Rowland (2017). “A Guide to Men: Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”, p.59, Litres

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• Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it.

  Joseph Priestley

  Children, Lying, Numbers

  Joseph Priestley (1831). “The Theological and Miscellaneous Works. Ed. with Notes by John Towill Rutt”, p.196

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• I love red and I think it's more than just a color: It evokes an emotion. When you wear red, it makes you feel empowered and sexy. For me, sin is all about temptation and the power of seduction. Red Sin is a combination of those elements to make women feel irresistible.

  Christina Aguilera

  Sexy, Thinking, Color

  "Sexy As Sin: Christina Aguilera Reveals Why She Finally Feels Sexy In Her Own Skin". Interview with Laura Schreffler, hauteliving.com. March 28, 2014.

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• America's Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small-government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big-government sympathizers who want to impose their version of 'righteousness' on others through the hammer of law.... Our movement must avoid the temptations of power and those who would twist the good intentions of Christian voters to support policies that undermine freedom and grow government.

  Dick Armey

  Christian, Independent, Government

  "Christians and Big Government - Why faith requires freedom". FreedomWorks (freedomworks.org), October 12, 2006.

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• The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hand it came.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Struggle, Heart, Men

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• To appear to be on the inside and know more than others about what is going on is a great temptation for most people. It is a rare person who is willing to seem to know less than he does ... Somehow, people seem to feel that it is belittling to their importance not to know more than other people.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Knowledge, Humility, Rare Person

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• Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful; and, contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them.

  Henry Fielding

  Gambling, Luxury, Vices

  Henry Fielding (1988). “An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings”, p.92, Wesleyan University Press

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• Who, under pressing temptations to lie, adheres to truth, nor to the profane betrays aught of a sacred trust, is near the summit of wisdom and virtue.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Lying, Sacred, Virtue

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• It is also possible to say precisely why. Truth seduces us very easily into a kind of joy of possession: I have comprehended this and that, learned it, understood it. Knowledge is power. I am therefore more than the other man who does not know this and that. I have greater possibilities and also greater temptations. Anyone who deals with truth - as we theologians certainly do - succumbs all too easily to the psychology of the possessor. But love is the opposite of the will to possess. It is self-giving. It boasteth not itself, but humbleth itself.

  Helmut Thielicke

  Love Is, Men, Opposites

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• The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.

  Edward Gibbon

  Opportunity, History, Giving

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, with notes by Milman and Guizot. Ed. by W. Smith”, p.363

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• When we rise above our temptations and resist them, we exercise self-control. And that's when we experience true freedom and emotional health.

  David J. Lieberman

  Exercise, Emotional, Self

  David J. Lieberman (2010). “Find Out Who's Normal and Who's Not: The Proven System to Quickly Assess Anyone's Emotional Stability”, p.55, David Lieberman

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• However, there is one great temptation and that is that you can forget that the aim of the writer was to reject all other worlds and to construct one of his own and that the aim of the translator is to re-embody himself into the world of the various writers.

  Ventseslav Konstantinov

  Other Worlds, Forget, Aim

  "From Bach to Kafka, or... about Temptation". Interview with Emil Bassat, Sofia News, May 30, 1984.

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• There are temptations around you all the time. The trick is to work your way through anxiety or your tiredness or whatever, and not let yourself get so hungry that you're going and stopping for the burgers, and you don't view it as reward. You're doing better for yourself is eating better food.

  Lisa Ann Walter

  Views, Anxiety, Stopping

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• As the worlds getting filled with temptations, were getting a bit frivolous and a bit fickle.

  Freida Pinto

  Fickle, World, Filled

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