quotations about temptation
Many a man is virtuous because he is neither clever enough to avoid temptation nor wise enough to yield to it.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.
MARGARET OLIPHANT
Miss Marjoribanks
There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.
HONORE DE BALZAC
Père Goriot
The saints all passed through many temptations and trials to profit by them, while those who could not resist became reprobate and fell away.
THOMAS A KEMPIS
The Imitation of Christ
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
Powers are developed here until they are capable of higher development in other portions of God's limitless universe; and suffering and temptation discipline the soul for a sphere where temptation shall no more be needed, and where the spirit shall go forward to practice upon what it has learned.
EDWIN HUBBELL CHAPIN
Living Words
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
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
Frequent and violent temptations were a proof that the citadel of the soul had not fallen and that the devil raged to make it fall.
JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The beginning of all temptation lies in a wavering mind and little trust in God, for as a rudderless ship is driven hither and yon by waves, so a careless and irresolute man is tempted in many ways.
THOMAS A KEMPIS
The Imitation of Christ
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"
We think if we can only take the temptation away from men, men will be virtuous. We are mistaken. Men are made virtuous by confronting temptation.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The temptations are endless, and willpower can only take us so far.
OLAYINKA
"The Real Reasons You Should Stop Procrastinating", Information Nigeria, May 30, 2017
Oh the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fear of perishing forever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of my great help, my great supports from Heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.
JOHN BUNYAN
preface, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
Temptations should end in victory.
J. NEWTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Temptation always gets hotter the closer we get to it. It would have been hard for Eve to pick the forbidden fruit if she stayed clear of it, say a hundred yards away.
RAYMOND MAHER
"Don't sit near the fire if your head is made of butter", The Battlefords News-Optimist, March 16, 2017
He that tempted Christ will not be expected to spare men.
ST. BERNARD
attributed, Day's Collacon
No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Measure for Measure