quotations about temptation
Temptations lead you to hide from the Lord and you go off with your fault, with your sin, with your corruption, far from the Lord.
POPE FRANCIS
Mass at Santa Marta, February 10, 2017
Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.
PASCAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 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
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"
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
'Tis no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
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
Every yielding to temptation is a hindrance, not a help, to moral development; but every temptation offers what, rightly employed, is an indispensable means of moral development. For all moral development is through temptation to virtue.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Measure for Measure
Satan tempts the ambitious man with a crown, the sanguine man with beauty, the covetous man with a wedge of gold; he provides savory meat, such as the sinner loves.
T. WATSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
The mother who tries to keep her child away from all temptation simply prepares the boy for a terrible fall when he gets old enough to leave the home. It is not by taking away the bonds, it is by giving strength to the man that he may break the bonds, that he is redeemed. Every man is like a Samson bound by his enemies, and he must acquire the strength within himself to break them.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The temptations are everywhere -- on the Internet, in the family medicine cabinet, and on the street.
HATTIE BERNSTEIN
"What are your kids hiding in their rooms?", Boston Globe, February 24, 2017
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
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
He that tempted Christ will not be expected to spare men.
ST. BERNARD
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Temptation would be a lot easier to avoid if we didn't meet it in such gay company.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes