Quotes about Temptation

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

"To heal is to chage the perception of a condition - not the condition! This is True perception.
This is standing on the bridge of the cross. The very concept of opposites is a concept of division, of split seeing. We only see one side of the whole at a time. If someone paid us with a coin we most certainly would not say: 'I dislike the tail side of the coin, give me the head side only'. A coin comes with two sides, so does life in the temporal world. We accept the two sides of the coin as one coin. Yet we do not accept the two sides of life as ONE life.
Obviously, there is a conflict here and that is our way of seeing. True perception always sets free from conflict because it does not perceive conflict. 'Ah,' I hear someone say, 'Wise words, indeed. But what if I lie dying of thirst in the desert. How could True perception give me water?' Remember the principle of stabilized perception? We recall: it is a fact that we believe what we see. It is equally a fact that we do not see what we do not believe. Another way of putting it is: we only experience what we hold possible. What we do not hold possible we do not experience in the case of the thirsty man it means he holds it possible to die of thirst. He sees what he believes.
True perception sees not lack of water as the man's problem. It sees fear of death as the underlying principle of the problem - this is the idea the problem contains. Lack of water in this case is the form through which the idea of fear of death expresses. Giving the man water may quench his thirst but cannot quench his fear. The next time around the man shall fear again. This means he has not understood the principle fear represents. Now he needs more contrast again to help him remove his 'blinkers' to learn to look past the form aspect of his problem, the lack of water. True perception would now look at (fear of) death and recognize it for what it really is, a perverted way of seeing life, the Ego's answer to life. Once again it would see the idea of death as nothing but the voice against God, a shadow of life. A shadow is an appearance, is absence of light. Absence of ilght cannot be, for light, or love or God, is All-There-Is. Therefore this shadow must be an imagined appeareance. Imagined appearances are dreams. In other words, True perception recognizes any experience which offers the temptation to doubt life as part of the great dream, and dissociates itself from such madness. What is cannot see as real it cannot believe in. What I cannot believe, I cannot experience. This is the reason for the answer to the thirsty fellow, for to him I say: 'With True perception needs not the contrast of such as experience, for contrast only comes to teach True perception!"

So here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune,' but 'To bear this worthily is a good fortune.'

What's difficult in life is to stay centered when somebody does or says something that tempts us to close our hearts because their heart was closed. That is hard. But that is also how we grow. We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us.

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds: Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Soul Gathers Force It is possible, when the future is dim, when our depressed faculties can form no bright ideas of the perfection and happiness of a better world,-it is possible still to cling to the conviction of God's merciful purpose towards His creatures, of His parental goodness even in suffering, still to feel that the path of duty, though trodden with a heavy heart, leads to peace; still to be true to conscience; still to do our work, to resist temptation, to be useful, though with diminished energy, to give up our wills when we cannot rejoice under God's mysterious providence. In this patient, though uncheered obedience, we become prepared for light. The soul gathers force.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end Neither loose imagination Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

It is obvious that truth in general depends on both language and extra-linguistic fact. The statement 'Brutus killed Caesar' would be false if the world had been different in certain ways, but it would also be false if the word 'killed' happened rather to have the sense of 'begat'. Thus one is tempted to suppose in general that the truth of a statement is somehow analysable into a linguistic component and a factual component. Given this supposition it next seems reasonable that in some statements the factual component should be null; and that these are the analytic statements. But for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between the analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith.

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

Don't worry about temptation - as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.

Temptation usually comes in through a door that has deliberately been left open.

I wouldn't be too surprised if the man gave into temptation, grabbed her cash, did her in, and put her remains through the sausage grinder in the meat department

The Constitution protects us from our own best intentions: It divides power among sovereigns and among branches of government precisely so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in one location as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day.

There is no sin we can be tempted to commit, but we shall find a greater satisfaction in resisting than in committing.

overcoming challenges 1. Knowledge of self 2. Knowledge of others 3. Desire to work 4. Desire to learn 5. Ability to say :Yes" and "No" 6. Ability to pick friends 7. Turn back on bad advice 8. Recognize inner beauty 9. Persistence 10. Avoid temptation

Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.

If you have been tempted into evil, fly from it. It is not falling into the water, but lying in it, that drowns.

Don't be troubled if the temptation to give advice is irresistible; the ability to ignore it is universal.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

We should be on our guard against the temptation to argue directly from skill to capacity, and to assume when a man displays skill in some feat, his capacity is therefore considerable.

He that is busy is tempted by but one devil; he that is idle, by a legion.

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"

In Jack Dempsey's early days he had a fight contract, which paid him two dollars per fight for the fights he won. He received nothing for the fights he lost. Jack Dempsey said that in his early days he was knocked down a lot of times and he usually was tempted to stay down because he knew that no one would hit him again until he started to get up. But Jack was a hungry fighter and he knew that if he was going to eat, he must get up in order to get the two dollars. He tells of one occasion when he was knocked down 11 times in one fight, and 11 times he got up in order to win the $2.

One great remedy against all manner of temptation, great or small, is to open the heart and lay bare its suggestion, likings, and dislikings before some spiritual adviser; for, . . . the first condition which the Evil One makes with a soul, when he wants to entrap it, is silence.

The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath.

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

We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.