Temptation Quotes - Page 40

• Temptations make one very censorious. If you are virtuous you condemn the wicked and if you are wicked, you condemn the virtuous.

  Elizabeth Bibesco

  Wicked, Virtuous, Ifs

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• Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation to be anthropomorphic about plants, to suspect that they do it to annoy.

  Eleanor Perenyi

  Gardening, Faces, Facts

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• O that one unguarded moment! / Were it mine to live again, / All the strength of its temptation / Would appeal to me in vain.

  Phoebe Cary

  Regret, Moments, Vain

  Phoebe Cary (1854). “Poems and Parodies”, p.58

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• to tempt and be tempted are closely allied; and in spite of all the finest moral maxims buried in the mind, when emotion interferes, when feeling makes its appearance, one is already much further involved that one realizes, and I have still not learnt how to prevent its appearance.

  Catherine the Great

  Feelings, Mind, Moral

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• We've all of us got to meet the devil alone. Temptation is a lonely business.

  Margaret Deland

  Lonely, Devil

  Margaret Deland (1969). “Dr. Lavendar's People”

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• The besetting evil of our age is the temptation to squander and dilute thought on a thousand different lines of inquiry.

  John Herschel

  Evil, Age, Different

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• Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Speak, Incline

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• artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Eye, Artist, Soul

  Phyllis Bottome (1934). “Innocence and experience: stories”

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• If experience teaches anything, it is that what the community undertakes to do is usually done badly. This is due in part to the temptation to corruption that such enterprises involve, but even more, perhaps, to the lack of personal interest on the part of those engaged in them.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Community, Society, Done

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• if we continue with what is surely our greatest Western temptation, and think that in some way history owes us a solution, that we can, by pursuing our own most parochial self-interest, achieve in some miraculous way a consummation of world order, then we are heading not simply towards great disappointments, but towards disaster and tragedy as well.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Disappointment, Thinking, Self

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• If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.

  James Martineau

  Dream, Self, Indulge In

  James Martineau (1905). “Tides of the Spirit: Selections from the Writings of James Martineau”

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• The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

  Jane Porter

  Religion, May, Morality

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.21

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• To undertake the direction of the economic life of people with widely divergent ideals and values is to assume responsibilities which commit one to the use of force; it is to assume a position where the best intentions cannot prevent one from being forced to act in a way which to some of those affected must appear highly immoral. This is true even if we assume the dominant power to be as idealistic and unselfish as we can possibly conceive. But how small is the likelihood that it will be unselfish, and how great are the temptations!

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Responsibility, People, Use

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

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• The temptations of prosperity insinuate themselves after a gentle, but very powerful manner; so that we are but little aware of them and less able to withstand them.

  Francis Atterbury

  Powerful, Littles, Able

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• The habit of virtue cannot be formed in a closet. Habits are formed by acts of reason in a persevering struggle through temptation.

  Bernard Gilpin

  Struggle, Virtue, Reason

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• The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of deep religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone's freedom is at risk.

  Edward Kennedy

  Religious, Men, Order

  "Kennedy Tells Falwell Group Of Tolerance" by Phil Gailey, www.nytimes.com. October 4, 1983.

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• It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably.

  David Platt

  Luxury, Battle, Stuff

  David Platt (2010). “Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream”, p.130, Multnomah

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• The Constitutional Convention debated whether America should even have a standing army. ... They worried that a powerful military could rival civilian government for power in our new country, and of course they worried that having a standing army around would create too much of a temptation to use it.

  Rachel Maddow

  Country, Powerful, Military

  Rachel Maddow (2012). “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power”, p.8, Broadway Books

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• the most dangerous temptations are not due to the active, sudden flames of desire, 'the lusts of the flesh,' but to the disinclinations of the flesh, its indolence and sluggishness, our tendency to become creatures of habit.

  Sigrid Undset

  Flames, Lust, Desire

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• the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

  Ethel Smyth

  Emotional, Practice, Musical

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• Temptations are part of life, part of growing up. We grapple with them often - in some instances for our lifetime - before we come to realize that it is not so much the victory as it is the struggle that is holy.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Growing Up, Struggle, Victory

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• Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Ideas, Two, Arrogance

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• Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may.

  J. G. Holland

  Country, Dirty, Indulge In

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• There is no man but for his own interest hath an obligation to be honest. There may be sometimes temptations to be otherwise; but, all cards cast up, he shall find it the greatest ease, the highest profit, the best pleasure, the most safety, and the noblest fame, to hold the horns of this altar, which, in all assays, can in himself protect him.

  Owen Feltham

  Honesty, Men, Safety

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• God won't permit temptation beyond your strength. It is true that temptations come to all, but God will give you the graces you need to withstand them, if you ask him to and if you are willing to cooperate with his grace...In God's presence, consider: Do I put up a fight when temptations beset me, or do I give up quickly and surrender myself to them without a struggle? Do I rely on God's grace to conquer temptations, or am I conquered by them?

  Patrick Madrid

  Giving Up, Struggle, Fighting

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