Tempted Quotes - Page 16

• Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern.

  James Russell Lowell

  Islands, Promise, Religion

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.109

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• I've never been tempted by God but I like his trappings.

  Jeanette Winterson

  God

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• If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil: his consent only makes it his. It is no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.

  William Penn

  Men, Evil, Weakness

  Benjamin Franklin, William Penn (2012). “Franklin's Way to Wealth and Penn's Maxims”, p.60, Courier Corporation

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• ... there are many to whom money has no personal appeal, but who can be tempted by the power it confers.

  Agatha Christie

  Appeals

  Agatha Christie (2003*). “Murder at the manor”

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• A dogmatical spirit inclines a man to be censorious of his neighbors. Every one of his opinions appears to him written, as it were, with sunbeams, and he grows angry that his neighbors do not see it in the same light. He is tempted to disdain his correspondents as men of low and dark understandings because they do not believe what he does.

  Isaac Watts

  Believe, Dark, Men

  Isaac Watts, Joseph Emerson (1855). “The Improvement of the Mind”, p.29

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• There have been many times when I have been so entirely sickened of life it was very hard to work to keep on, a half dozen times I have been tempted to suicide, but I am glad I did not give way, for I have always felt that the last half of my life would somehow atone for the first half, and I still think it may ... It is not possible to live in this world without suffering unless one is a born stone. But it is also possible to have a great deal of happiness in spite of the suffering.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Suicide, Thinking, Giving

  Katherine Anne Porter, Isabel Bayley (1994). “Letters of Katherine Anne Porter”, p.94, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• I want a human sermon. I don't care what Melchisedek, or Zerubbabel, or Kerenhappuk did, ages ago; I want to know what I am to do, and I want somebody besides a theological bookworm to tell me; somebody who is sometimes tempted and tried, and is not too dignified to own it; somebody like me, who is always sinning and repenting; somebody who is glad and sorry, and cries and laughs, and eats and drinks, and wants to fight when they are trodden on, and don't!

  Fanny Fern

  Sorry, Fighting, Laughing

  Fanny Fern (2017). “Ginger-Snaps”, p.90, Litres

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• Many times we are tempted to defer to the documents we create, rather than the direct experiences we have.

  John Paul Caponigro

  Photographer, Documents, Direct

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• I am often tempted to think of success in terms that are defined by others: records sold, popularity gained, album reviews, etc. These are impossible demands, however, and they can never be satisfied. Letting finite others define our worth is a horrible way to live. Only the Infinite Other [God] has the authority to do this.

  Jon Foreman

  Thinking, Albums, Way To Live

  Source: www.timothywillard.com

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• Gratitude is at the center of a life of faith. It sounds to simple to be true, but isn't that the sign of all deep truth: so simple we're tempted to dismiss it, and so hard, it is exactly what God uses to change our hard lives.

  Ann Voskamp

  Gratitude, Simple, Hard Life

  Source: livesentresources.wordpress.com

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• No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free; let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all.

  Herbert Spencer

  Men, Temptation, Age

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• The Seconds that tick as the clock moves along
  Are Privates who march with a spirit so strong.
  The Minutes are Captains. The Hours of the day
  Are Officers brave, who lead on to the fray.
  So, remember, when tempted to loiter and dream
  You've an army at hand; your command is supreme;
  And question yourself, as it goes on review--
  Had it helped in the fight with the best it could do?

  Philander Chase Johnson

  Dream, Strong, Moving

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• When God says no, we are sometimes tempted to wonder if He loves us. In reality, it’s because He loves us, He sometimes says no.

  Lysa TerKeurst

  Reality, Sometimes, Wonder

  Twitter post from Sep 03, 2016

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• Let no one who has the slightest desire to live in peace and quietness be tempted, under any circumstances, to enter upon the chivalrous task of trying to correct a popular error.

  William Thoms

  Errors, Desire, Trying

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• Conservatives . . . may decide to join the game and seek activist judges with conservative views. Should that come to pass, those who have tempted the courts to political judging will have gained nothing for themselves but will have destroyed a great and essential institution. . . . There are only two sides. Either the Constitution and statutes are law, which means their principles are known and control judges, or they are malleable texts that judges may rewrite to see that particular groups or political causes win.

  Robert Bork

  Mean, Winning, Views

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• Dawkins asserts that final causes and design don't really exist. Unguided evolution explains it all. Francis Crick thought the same thing but was afraid people would be misled by what they actually saw. So he issued this warning: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." What? A warning to ignore the obvious? Absolutely. Because if we don't ignore the obvious, we might be tempted to follow common sense and attribute the "appearance" of design to actual design.

  Frank Turek

  People, Common Sense, Design

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• We're actually trying to develop an iPhone app, now that the Droid is out, we'll do it for that as well, if we ever learn how to program on this thing. But the idea is that to make money concrete. So, you can do this app, and it's not out there, but you can do the app. And you say, "I like vacation in the Bahamas, shoes, lattes, and books." And now, when you are tempted to buy something, that thing translates in terms of the things you are interested in.

  Dan Ariely

  Book, Vacation, Iphone

  "A conversation with Dan Ariely, Author of Predictably Irrational". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. November 18, 2009.

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• The man who has never been tempted doesn't know how dishonest he is.

  Josh Billings

  Men, He Man, Know How

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• God is a spirit. Jesus was led up of the Spirit to be tempted of the Devil; and it is also true that spirits are very likely to lead men to the Devil. Too intimate acquaintance with whisky toddy overnight is often followed by the delirium tremens and blue-devils on the morrow. We advise our readers to eschew alike spirituous and spiritual mixtures. They interfere sadly with sober thinking, and play the Devil with your brains.

  Charles Bradlaugh

  Spiritual, Jesus, Men

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• I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morningwith a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Music, Wise, Drinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.183, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Preschoolers sound much brighter and more knowledgeable than they really are, which is why so many parents and grandparents are sosure their progeny are gifted and super-bright. Because children's questions sound so mature and sophisticated, we are tempted to answer them at a level of abstraction far beyond the child's level of comprehension. That is a temptation we should resist.

  David Elkind

  Children, Grandparent, Temptation

  David Elkind (1999). “La educacion erronea. Ninos preescolares en peligro”, Fondo De Cultura Economica USA

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• I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personalrelations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love, Remembrance, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1329, Delphi Classics

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• Some men are tempted to violate secrecy from the uneasiness secrecy gives them, and others, merely to impress you with the extent of their confidence.

  Norm MacDonald

  Men, Giving, Secrecy

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• Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness is Adophe Monod at his best. It is a masterpiece, bringing together profound comfort, realistic understanding, practical wisdom, and heavenly glory for every believer and, in a special way, for those who are preparing for or are working directly in some ministry. By the Spirit's grace, if you digest Monod's book slowly, seriously, and prayerfully, you will make great spiritual gain as you engage in holy warfare against your own temptations and lusts. You really must read this book.

  Joel Beeke

  Spiritual, Jesus, Book

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• It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Income, Patterns, Might

  "Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics" by Kenneth Boulding, University of Michigan Press, (p. 142), 1970.

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