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Temptation

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

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

  • Resisted temptations become lost opportunities ...

  • 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.

  • ... 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.

  • Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.

  • Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

    • Agnes Repplier,
    • "Conservative's Consolations," Points of Friction ()
  • Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

  • I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

  • 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,
    • "The Unguarded Moment," Poems and Parodies ()
  • Temptations make one very censorious. If you are virtuous you condemn the wicked and if you are wicked, you condemn the virtuous.

  • Temptation almost always assails us at the point where we thought no defense necessary.

  • No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

  • ... 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.

  • The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it.

  • While forbidden fruit is said to taste sweeter, it usually spoils faster.