Temptation Quotes - Page 21

I know that each of us has much to do. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the tasks we face. But if we keep our priorities in order, we can accomplish all that we should. We can endure to the end regardless of temptations, problems, and challenges.

Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," to tempt Him withal, He did not stand and look upon them, viewing their glory, and pondering their empire.... but instantly, without stay, He cries, "Get thee hence, Satan." Meet thy temptation in its entrance with thoughts of faith concerning Christ on the cross; this will make it sink before thee. Entertain no parley, no dispute with it, if thou wouldst not enter into it.

Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods thyself a Goddess.

There are temptations which strong exercise best enables us to resist

I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines

In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known.

I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them.

The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect--but, nearly invariably, the stupidest.

So many things beat upon us in a lifetime that simply enduring may seem almost beyond us… But the test a loving God has set before us is not to see if we can endure difficulty. It is to see if we can endure it well. We pass the test by showing that we remembered Him and the commandments He gave us. And to endure well is to keep those commandments whatever the opposition, whatever the temptation, and whatever the tumult around us.

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

A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.

The whole mystery of temptation is to have sins suggested to us, and to be swept after them by a sudden enthusiasm, which sometimes feels as strong as the Spirit of God ever made in us the enthusiasm for virtue.

Scripture doesn't promise that God will remove temptation, only that you'll be given strength to withstand it.

Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation.

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

What is impossible to me as an imitator of Christ, becomes perfectly natural as a participant of Christ. It is Only when Christ nullifies the force of my inherent "self' life," and communicates to me a Divine life, that Christian living in its true sense, is at all possible for me.

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.

Money is emphasized in Scripture simply because our temptation to love it is inexplicably powerful.

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.

Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.

We must get over wanting to be needed-this is the hardest of all temptations to resist

We must learn by experience to avoid either trains of thought or social situations which for us (not necessarily for everyone) lead to temptations. Like motoring-don't wait till the last moment before you put on the brakes but put them on, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off.

Every time the enemy throws us off our guard, and we give way to temptation, he gains so much; he weakens us and strengthens himself; when we resist temptation, it strengthens the Saints and weakens the enemy.

The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.

Sometimes the devil tempts me to believe in God.