quotations about temptation
The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.
LAURENCE J. PETER
Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Times
Honest bread is very well--it's the butter that makes the temptation.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
The Catspaw
The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.
G. C. LICHTENBERG
Aphorisms
If you want to prevent short-term temptations from derailing important long-term goals, you can change the way you think about those temptations. Focusing on the specifics of those temptations--particularly their desirable characteristics--makes it harder to resist those temptations. Thinking about the temptations abstractly, though, makes them less likely to engage your motivation to act. And that helps you to continue to do things that will help you to achieve those long-term goals.
ART MARKMAN
"Note to Self: It Is Easiest to Avoid Abstract Temptations", Psychology Today, April 14, 2017
The Bible uses the word tests, temptations, and trials almost interchangeable because the same word used for tests, temptations, and trials comes in the Greek word "peirasmos" and means "an experiment, a trial," or "proving" so God doesn't send tests or trials to break us but to strengthen our faith but to also show us how weak or strong it is. God isn't trying to find out something about our faith; He already knows all that there is to know about us. He is interested in our proving to ourselves the depth or shallowness of our faith.
JACK WELLMAN
"Does the Bible Teach God Will Not Give Us More Than We Can Handle?", Patheos, January 5, 2017
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters--where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Temptations are an heavy burden; too heavy for any to bear, if God did not strengthen them. Tempted souls wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with Principalities and Powers; and therefore they need greater strength than their own.
WILLIAM NOTCUTT
A Treatise of Temptations
Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.
MARGARET OLIPHANT
Miss Marjoribanks
There is no state so holy, no place so secret that temptations and trials will not come. Man is never safe from them as long as he lives, for they come from within us -- in sin we were born. When one temptation or trial passes, another comes; we shall always have something to suffer because we have lost the state of original blessedness.
THOMAS A KEMPIS
The Imitation of Christ
There can be no virtue without temptation; for virtue is victory over temptation.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
C. S. LEWIS
Mere Christianity
But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor.
ALEXANDER POPE
Moral Essays
Temptations are meant to deceive us. They are aimed at our weak spots.
RAYMOND MAHER
"Don't sit near the fire if your head is made of butter", The Battlefords News-Optimist, March 16, 2017
The harder a temptation is to resist, the more you think about it and vacillate. That uncertainty is part of the process of growing.
RAP MONSTER
"BTS Talks Meaning of 'WINGS' And What They Hope To Achieve With Their 2nd Album", Soompi, October 10, 2016
Ah! when in the immortal ranks enlisted,
I sometimes wonder if we shall not find
That not by deeds, but by what we've resisted,
Our places are assigned.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"As By Fire"
'Tis no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
The temptation is not here, where you are reading about it or praying about it: it is down in your shop, among bales and boxes, ten-penny nails, and sandpaper.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
Living Words
Temptations should end in victory.
J. NEWTON
attributed, Day's Collacon