Temptation Quotes - Page 37

• Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wealth, Snares

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.187

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• The Lord is well aware of our mortality. He knows our weaknesses. He understands the challenges of our everyday lives. He has great empathy for the temptations of earthly appetites and passions.

  Joseph B. Wirthlin

  Passion, Empathy, Challenges

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• Sometimes the devil tempts me to believe in God.

  Bill Vaughan

  Believe, Atheism, Devil

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• Soul's Castle fell at one blast of temptation, But many a worm had pierced the foundation.

  William Allingham

  Soul, Foundation, Castles

  William Allingham, Helen Paterson Allingham (1912). “Poems”

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• There's a great temptation to clean everything up and make everything more perfect. You have to know when to stop and stop doing it, or you might end up with something that sounds metronomic.

  David Byrne

  Perfect, Sound, Might

  Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. September 22, 2008.

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• The Spirit of man is like a kite, which rises by means of those very forces which seem to oppose its rise; the tie that joins it to the earth, the opposing winds of temptation, and the weight of earth-born affections which it carries with it into the sky.

  Coventry Patmore

  Mean, Men, Sky

  Coventry Patmore (2016). “The Rod, the Root and the Flower”, p.9, Lulu.com

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• I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Internet, Shows

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• There's a lesson in every temptation.

  Frank Herbert

  Lessons

  Frank Herbert (2008). “God Emperor of Dune”, p.363, Penguin

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• The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth.

  Lord Acton

  Fighting, Evil, Giving

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.30, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation, must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free but facts are sacred.

  C. P. Scott

  Truth, Integrity, Media

  'Manchester Guardian' 5 May 1921

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• Ah, my brother, it is a far harder thing, and it is afar higher proof of a thorough-going, persistent, Christian principle woven into the very texture of my soul, to go on plodding and patient, never taken by surprise by any small temptation, than to gather into myself the strength which God has given me, and, expecting some great storm to come down upon me, to stand fast, and let it rage. It is a great deal easier to die once for Christ than to live always for Him.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Christian, Brother, Taken

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 109), 1895.

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• Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Age, Weakness, Lines

  "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes". Book by Rutherford B. Hayes, 1922 - 1926.

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• Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

  James Martineau

  Character, Battle, Affliction

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

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• The opposite of love? Vice. Temptation. The negative influences that we have. The bad energy that comes around us and makes us do certain things. To me, it's always been a war between the two.

  Kendrick Lamar

  War, Opposites, Two

  Interview with Erykah Badu, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 23, 2013.

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• I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.

  James L. Buckley

  Important, Cases, Overwhelming

  James L. Buckley (2010). “Freedom at Risk: Reflections on Politics, Liberty, and the State”, p.246, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known.

  Joanne Harris

  Dream, Chocolate, Gorges

  Joanne Harris (2000). “Chocolat”, p.188, Penguin

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• Whoever has the power to label others as evil is automatically, or reflexively, the good person. Good people label bad people as evil. And once you do that, then it demonizes them. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't sit down at the table with the devil and say, "Okay, let's work this out." What you want to do is destroy evil. Every Catholic kid every night says, or should say, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil." And so you've got to go to God to help you deal with evil rather than your State Department or your negotiators.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Kids, Night, People

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• It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation.

  Hyman Rickover

  Successful, Work Out, Doubt

  "The Rickover Effect". Book by Theodore Rockwell, 1992.

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• Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it-the quality of temptation.

  Hannah

  People, Evil, Quality

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• The command of a large sum is a dangerous temptation to a national administration. Though accumulated at their expense, the people rarely, if ever profit by it: yet in point of fact, all value, and consequently, all wealth, originates with the people.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  People, Administration, Facts

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.487

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• Temptation out of reach does you no good.

  Craig Johnson

  Doe

  Craig Johnson (2013). “The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set”, p.236, Penguin

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• For most of us, the classic test of willpower is resisting temptation, whether the temptress is a doughnut, a cigarette, a clearance sale, or a one-night stand. When people say, "I have no willpower," what they usually mean is, "I have trouble saying no when my mouth, stomach, heart, or (fill in your anatomical part) wants to say yes.

  Kelly McGonigal

  Heart, Mean, Night

  Kelly McGonigal (2011). “The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It”, p.14, Penguin

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• The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings.

  Paul Ormerod

  Air, Use, Mathematics

  "The Death of Economics". Book by Paul Ormerod, 1994.

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• For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.

  Ellen Willis

  Crush, Zero, Mistake

  "Dreaming of War". "The Nation", October 15, 2001.

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• We must now surrender to the obligation to understand and to care. We must surrender ourselves to becoming conscious, thinking members of the human race. We must put down the temptation to powerlessness and surrender to the questions of the moment.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Knowledge, Thinking, Race

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