Resisting Temptation Quotes

'It's okay. I understand that you're tempted and know you shouldn't grab the apple, and when you did you wanted to drop it. But I'm not good at resisting temptation. I'd rather eat the fucking thing, and enjoy it, even if I end up in hell.' ~ Barbara Elsborg

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once. ~ F.H. Bradley

But it's easy enough to ignore temptations when you are confident that there is someone waiting at home for your return. However, if that person is no longer a certainty, then it becomes harder and harder to escape even the least temptation which comes along. ~ Andrew James Pritchard

For most of us, the classic test of willpower is resisting temptation, whether the temptress is a doughnut, a cigarette, a clearance sale, or a one-night stand. When people say, "I have no willpower," what they usually mean is, "I have trouble saying no when my mouth, stomach, heart, or (fill in your anatomical part) wants to say yes. ~ Kelly McGonigal

He took a deep breath in, still managing himself as if he were resisting temptation. He was a soldier, his father was in the service, too. Crying wasn't something Morell men did. They just didn't.

He hadn't cried at Robbie Morell's funeral.

So he wasn't going to now. ~ Luke Taylor

The way to Heaven is straight and narrow: they who wish to arrive at that place of bliss by walking in the paths of pleasure shall be disappointed; and therefore few reach it, because few are willing to use violence to themselves in resisting temptations. ~ Alphonsus Liguori

Can anything be more absurd than keeping women in a state of ignorance, and yet so vehemently to insist on their resisting temptation? ~ Vicesimus Knox

What's the good of resisting temptation? There'll always be more. ~ Mae West

Why resist temptation? There will always be more. ~ Don Herold

This freedom from decision making is crucial, because when I have to decide - which often involves resisting temptation or postponing gratification - I tax my self-control. ~ Gretchen Rubin

What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don't want to discourage it completely. ~ Franklin P. Jones

And yet with that bleak horizon before her eyes, Katerina had said the first problem was the uranium. All the children dying. It came to that: women and their children. Even women and the children who did not belong to them. It was the only force in the world resisting the centrifugal destructive rage of men. ~ Victor Robert Lee

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling conventions. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.
But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names. ~ Barack Obama

Emma, calm down. I had to know-"
I point my finger in his face, almost touching his eyeball. "It's one thing for me to give your permission to look into it. But I'm pretty sure looking into it without my consent is illegal. In fact, I'm pretty sure everything that woman does is illegal. Do you even know what the Mafia is, Galen?"
His eyebrows lift in surprise. "She told you who she is? I mean, who she used to be?"
I nod. "While you were checking in with Grom. Once in the Mob, always in the Mob, if you ask me. How else would she get all her money? But I guess you wouldn't care about that, since she buys you houses and cars and fake IDs." I snatch my wrist away and turn back toward our hotel. At least, I hope it's our hotel.
Galen laughs. "Emma, it's not Rachel's money; it's mine."
I whirl on him. "You are a fish. You don't have a job. And I don't think Syrena currency has any of our presidents on it." Now "our" means I'm human again. I wish I could make up my mind.
He crosses his arms. "I earn it another way. Walk to the Gulfarium with me, and I'll tell you how."
The temptation divides me like a cleaver. I'm one part hissy fit and one part swoon. I have a right to be mad, to press charges, to cut Rachel's hair while she's sleeping. But do I really want to risk the chance that she keeps a gun under her pillow? Do I want to miss the opportunity to scrunch my toes in the sand and listen to Galen's rich voice tell me how a fish came to be wealthy ~ Anna Banks

Adopting a vegan diet brings your choices and actions in line with those same beliefs that underlie a commitment to resisting regressive politics: generosity, compassion, and a commitment to justice and fairness. By acting in a way that reflects your values and what you believe, you relieve the cognitive dissonance that can make stress and depression worse. ~ Carol J. Adams

Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world. ~ C.J. Mahaney

Love is a sensation caused by temptation when a guy sticks his location into a girl's destination to increase the population for the next generation. Do you understand my explanation or do you need a demonstration? ~ A. J. McLean

You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. ~ C.S. Lewis

Many eat that on earth that they digest in hell. ~ Thomas Brooks

How can one freeze and put their hands above their head at the same time? Do they teach cops to shout contradictory instructions at suspects at the academy for some sinister purpose? If I obeyed one cop, did the other cop get to shoot me for resisting arrest? ~ Kevin Hearne

A heart's wound heals quicker than a soul's scratch. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

But because so many kept silent, the temptation is great to discount one's own silence, or to compensate for it by invoking the general guilt, or to speak about oneself all but abstractly, in the third person: he was, saw, had, said, he kept silent... ~ Gunter Grass

There isn't any virtue where there has never been any temptation. ~ Margaret Deland

I don't think there's any way that war can have a place in peace. I think that peace is the active and difficult resistance to the temptation of war; it is the prerogative and the obligation of the injured. Peace is something that has to be vigilantly maintained; it is a vigilance, and it involves temptation, and it does not mean we as human beings are not aggressive. This is a mistaken way of understanding non-violence. ~ Judith Butler

You think that you can judge what's good or evil from whether you enjoy doing it or not. You think that evil is what always appears in the form of a temptation, while good is what you never spontaneously want to do. I think this is all total rubbish, if you don't mind my saying so. ~ Hannah Arendt

When you get up in the morning, before you suffer yourselves to eat one mouthful of food, call your wife and children together, bow down before the Lord, ask him to forgive your sins, and protect you through the day, to preserve you from temptation and all evil, to guide your steps aright ... ~ Brigham Young

They were close. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to do a lot of things. Lilah found herself wanting to give in to temptation. Why no? Sam wasn't going to be in Harper Falls for long. When would she get another chance to take advantage of this kind of situation? A real-life bona-fide sex god wanted her. ~ Mary J. Williams

Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour- -suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next- -or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? ~ Charlotte Bronte

I know that many of the things I have said from the Scriptures have offended, and I have sometimes been tempted to tone down the message. But, God helping me, I never will! I would become a false prophet. I would also betray my Lord. ~ Billy Graham

Temptation: Recognize it for what it is, and then reject it - immediately and without compromise. ~ Billy Graham

[A]t least since the late nineteenth century when the primary role in categorising sexual behaviour and naming what is 'normal' and what is 'perverse' passed, in most industrial societies, from the religious to the medical and scientific professions, we have lived with the notion of distinct categories of people labelled 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual'. (The category 'homosexual' was coined by the Viennese writer Karol Benkert in 1869, 'heterosexual' emerging somewhat later.) Since that time, new discourses have tried to establish the male 'homosexual' as a distinct type of person - as opposed to same-sex attraction or same-sex acts being seen as a potential in everyone. As Peter Tatchell ['It's Just a Phase: Why Homosexuality is Doomed', in Simpson (ed.), Anti-Gay, London: Cassell. 1996] puts it, 'prior to that time … there were only homosexual acts, not homosexual people … [For] the medieval Catholic Church … homosexuality was not … the special sin of a unique class of people but a dangerous temptation to which any mortal might succumb. This doctrine implicitly conceded the attractiveness of same-sex desire, and unwittingly acknowledged its pervasive, universal potential ~ Richard Dunphy

Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that reared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them. ~ John Bunyan

MAT26.41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. ~ Anonymous

When Satan tempted Adam, he was disguised as a serpent; when Satan tempted Jesus, he was not disguised. As we approach the End of the Age, Satan will gradually unmask himself. Matthew 24 and Revelation 13 ~ Felix Wantang

The Devil has a great advantage against us inasmuch as he has a strong bastion and bulwark against us in our own flesh and blood. ~ Martin Luther

Contrary to popular opinion, a man can shut love out if he wants to. But to do so, he must free himself not only from the woman who has bewitched him but also from the third person in the story, the ghost who has put temptation in his way. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Trials are nothing else but the forge that purifies the soul of all its imperfections. ~ Magdalena De Pazzi

A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. ~ George Orwell

There is nothing wrong with you being tempted, the important thing is that you do not fall for the temptation ~ Sunday Adelaja

He watched her from the fading dark, unseen and invisible, just another shadow in the trees. He wondered if he had been right to come here, to see her one last time, though he knew resisting her was futile. He couldn't leave without seeing her again, hearing her voice and seeing her smile, even though it wasn't for him. He had no illusions about his addiction to her. She had her fingers sunk firmly into his heart, and could do with it what she wished.
He watched her walk away with the Iron faery and the dog, watched them leave to return to her own realm, back to a place he couldn't follow.
For now. ~ Julie Kagawa

Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world ... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. for we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I have observed an analogy between a force field equilibrium and resistance to change in organizations. Let us imagine change to be a coiled spring in a field of opposing forces, such that some forces support change and others resist it. By increasing supporting forces such as supervisory pressure, prospects of career growth and monetary benefits or decreasing the resisting forces such as group norms, social rewards and work avoidance, the situation can be directed towards the desired result - but for a short time only, and that too only to a certain extent. After a while the resisting forces push back with greater force as they are compressed even more tightly. Therefore, a better approach would be to decrease the resisting force in such a manner that there is no concomitant increase in the supporting forces. In this way, less energy will be needed to bring about and maintain change.
The result of the forces i mentioned above, is motive. ~ Arun Tiwari

But there was only so much temptation a man could resist without losing all respect for himself. ~ Michael Swanwick

If you play with temptation do not expect God will deliver you ~ Mary Slessor

A critical analysis of the present global constellation-one which offers no clear solution, no "practical" advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing towards us-usually meets with reproach: "Do you mean we should do nothing? Just sit and wait?" One should gather the courage to answer: "YES, precisely that!" There are situations when the only true "practical" thing to do is to resist the temptation to engage immediately and to "wait and see" by means of a patient, critical analysis. Engagement seems to exert its pressure on us from all directions. In a well-known passage from his 'Existentialism and Humanism', Sartre deployed the dilemma of a young man in France in 1942, torn between the duty to help his lone, ill mother and the duty to enter the war and fight the Germans; Sartre's point is, of course, that there is no a priori answer to this dilemma. The young man needs to make a decision grounded only in his own abyssal freedom and assume full responsibility for it.

An obscene third way out of this dilemma would have been to advise the young man to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his Resistance friends that he will take care of his mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying.

There is more than cheap cynicism in this advice. It brings to mind a well-known Soviet joke about Lenin. Under socialism; L ~ Slavoj Zizek

I could never resist the temptation of having a look at something that doesn't exist. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart. ~ J.M. Coetzee

When you are being tempted, do not say, "God is tempting me." God is never tempted to do wrong,* and he never tempts anyone else. 14 Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. 15 These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. ~ Anonymous

Researchers were surprised to find that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did ... people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work. ~ Roy Baumeister

I didn't stand a chance of resisting you, Abby. The minute you walked through my door, it's been a battle. ~ Lauren Blakely

When we are angered by the sins of others, we should beware lest a temptation of an opposite kind should take possession of our minds. ~ John Calvin

This coarse and insulting way of regarding woman, as though they existed merely to be the safety-valves of men's passions, and that the best men were above the temptation of loving them, has been the source of unnumbered evils. ~ Annie Besant

Sometimes being a Highland Laird was a royal pain in the arse. ~ Victoria Roberts

The serpent's objective is clear. He seeks to drive a wedge of doubt into Adam and Eve's confidence in what God has told them. Satan knows the power of undermining a human being's confidence in what God has revealed. Sadly, the serpent's temptation was successful. Adam and Eve second-guessed God's trustworthiness and then rejected his command. They sinned and ate the forbidden fruit. This was the beginning of the fallen world we all experience. All generations following would have a natural bent for rebelling against God and being skeptical or indifferent to what he has said. To this day, Satan's objective has not changed. Though his questions look a little different at times, they all contain the same idea ~ Jon Morrison

Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere. ~ Robert Bork

Choices are exhibited through the notions of free will,temptation challenges them. ~ Crimson "C.L. Williams"

The sweetest temptation could be that which was known to be the most foolish. ~ Piers Anthony

Sure, they only had ten days to stop the giants from waking Gaia. Sure, he could die before dinnertime. But he loved being told that something was impossible. It was like someone handing him a lemon meringue pie and telling him not to throw it. He just couldn't resist the challenge. ~ Rick Riordan