Temptation Quotes - Page 28

• There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

  Annie Dillard

  Journey, Self, Years

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• Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Love Is, Desire, Stronger

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “Written On The Body”, p.78, Random House

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• Hard to say what's right when all I wanna do is wrong.

  Prince

  Music, Morality, Hard

  Song: Gett Off

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• A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.

  Gregory Maguire

  Princess, Elephants, Ducks

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• 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 rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

  Charlotte Bronte

  Law, Soul, Religion

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “Jane Eyre: Easyread Edition”, p.149, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Thinking, Errors, Ideas

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.15

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• If death itself were to die, would it have a ghost, and would the ghost of death visit the dead in the guise of someone alive, if only to fright them from any temptation to return?

  William H. Gass

  Alive, Return, Ghost

  William H. Gass (2010). “A Temple of Texts”, p.346, Knopf Group E-Books

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• ... for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity unless we watch and pray and never think them too trivial to be resisted.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Integrity, Thinking, Watches

  Louisa May Alcott (2015). “Louisa May Alcott Premium Edition - 16 Novels in One Volume: Little Women Trilogy & Other Novels (Illustrated): Moods, The Mysterious Key and What It Opened, An Old Fashioned Girl, Work, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, Behind a Mask, The Abbot's Ghost, A Modern Mephistopheles…”, p.2465, e-artnow

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• What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Yield, Cities, Use

  P. G. Wodehouse (2015). “My Man Jeeves”, p.29, Booklassic

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• Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

  Emily Giffin

  Love, Passion, Years

  "Thoughtful Emily Giffin Quotes You'll Want to Bookmark and Read Again and Again". www.popsugar.com. July 04, 2016.

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• Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett

  Book, Irritation, People

  "A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time".

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• I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Book, Writing, Liquor

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• Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Freedom, Democracy

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• Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.

  Martin Luther

  Sports, Drinking, Beer

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• When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

  Elizabeth Kostova

  Book, Long, Handle

  Elizabeth Kostova (2010). “The Historian”, p.19, Hachette UK

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• To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Song, Silly, Fall

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1221, Delphi Classics

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• This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen.

  George Carlin

  Art, Prayer, Father

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• You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Christian, Mother, Father

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.236, Diversion Books

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• We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.

  Helen Keller

  Appreciation, Ignorance, Self

  Helen Keller (2007). “My Religion”, p.190, Book Tree

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• There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings

  Alfred de Musset

  Angel, Wings, Humanity

  Alfred de Musset, Michael Feingold (1993). “Fantasio and other plays”

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• You have a heritage honor it. You have posses a testimony share it. You will face temptations withstand it. You know the truth live it.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Honor, Heritage, Faces

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• Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.

  John Owen

  Believe, Blow, Wind

  John Owen (1990). “The Works of John Owen”

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• About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.

  Paulo Coelho

  Fall, Evil, Would Be

  Paulo Coelho (2009). “The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• Leigh did what any sane female faced with such an e-mail would do: deleted it to resist the temptation of replying, cleared her trash to resist the temptation of recalling it, and then called tech support to restore all her recently deleted e-mails. (Chasing Harry Winston)

  Lauren Weisberger

  Support, Female, Mail

  Lauren Weisberger (2009). “Chasing Harry Winston: A Novel”, p.269, Simon and Schuster

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• I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote.

  Ian Mcewan

  Intelligent, Shadow, Faces

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