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Temptation Quotes

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Temptation Quotes

“I couldn't ever blame them for trying to get me to shop with them or ship for myself or simply enjoy my money - this was a behavior many people learned and exhibited in all kinds of circumstances in their lives. In my own life, I'd had friends who would hand me another drink and encourage me to stay out all night. I'd had friends who suggested we switch to drugs so we could stay awake longer. I'd also had friends who would happily skip a workout and suggest we split a large pizza instead. Now I had friends who tried to justify why I should buy things for myself.”

FriendsSelf AwarenessTemptationThought Provoking
Book:The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store
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“There are crimes of which the motive is want; and for these Phaleas expects to find a cure in the equalization of property, which will take away from a man the temptation to be a highwayman, because he is hungry or cold. But want is not the sole incentive to crime; men also wish to enjoy themselves and not to be in a state of desire- they wish to cure some desire, going beyond the necessities of life, which preys upon them; nay, this is not the only reason- they may desire superfluities in order to enjoy pleasures unaccompanied with pain, and therefore they commit crimes.”

PainDesirePleasurePovertyCrimeTemptationLackIncentive
Book:Politics
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“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on [our Heavenly Father's] ground... It is His invention... He made the pleasures... All [Satan and his devils] can do is to encourage... humans to take the pleasures which our [God] has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence [they] always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for and ever diminishing pleasure is the formula... To get a man's soul and give him nothing in return - that is what really gladdens [the heart of Satan and his devils].”

PleasureAddictionTemptationSacredness
Book:The Screwtape Letters
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“There are many roads in this world that will guide you to pleasurable, fun, and exciting destinations that do not end in any form of lasting happiness. So before you step on an enticing path, figure out where it leads.”

HappinessFunPleasurePathTemptationExcitementRichelle GoodrichRichelleRoadPath Of LifeEnticementTrail
Book:Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
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“His touch was fire and sin, a dangerous game between pleasure and surrender — and I was already losing”

DesirePassionLustTemptationIntimateSeductionDark RomanceCravingErotic RomanceForbidden Touch
Book:SZEPTY POŻĄDANIA. Romanse dla kobiet: Erotyka, miłość, namiętność i tajemnice w 6 zmysłowych opowieściach o codziennych chwilach, które mogą spotkać także Ciebie
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“Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what it’s monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place.”

DesireSinGayTemptationVanitySelfishness
Book:The Picture Of Dorian Gray
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“I simply have no business being in love and playing around with a girl, however innocently.... After all I am supposed to be a monk with a vow of chastity and though I have kept my vow—I wonder if I can keep it indefinitely and still play this gorgeous game!”

DesireCommitmentFalling In LoveTemptationMonkVowDilemmaGameChastity
Book:Learning to Love: The Journals of Thomas Merton [Volume Six 1966-1967]
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“The source of love, as I learned later, is a curiosity which, combined with the inclination which nature is obliged to give us in order to preserve itself. […] Hence women make no mistake in taking such pains over their person and their clothing, for it is only by these that they can arouse a curiosity to read them in those whom nature at their birth declared worthy of something better than blindness. […] As time goes on a man who has loved many women, all of them beautiful, reaches the point of feeling curious about ugly women if they are new to him. He sees a painted woman. The paint is obvious to him, but it does not put him off. His passion, which has become a vice, is ready with the fraudulent title page. ‘It is quite possible,’ he tells himself, ‘that the book is not as bad as all that; indeed, it may have no need of this absurd artifice.’ He decides to scan it, he tries to turn over the pages—but no! the living book objects; it insists on being read properly, and the ‘egnomaniac’ becomes a victim of coquetry, the monstrous persecutor of all men who ply the trade of love. You, Sir, who are a man of intelligence and have read these least twenty lines, which Apollo drew from my pen, permit me to tell you that if they fail to disillusion you, you are lost—that is, you will be the victim of the fair sex to the last moment of your life. If that prospect pleases you, I congratulate you”

DesireCuriosityTemptationArtificeCoquetryArtificialityCoquette
Book:History of My Life, Vols. I & II
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“They say I should stay away from you,” I said. “They said you’re not good for me.” “I’m not,” he said with a wicked smile, “But doesn’t that make it even more fun?”

MenLoveRomanceDesireSexRelationshipsSinLoversMen And WomenDistanceSexualityLustLove StoryTemptationSensualParanormal RomanceParanormalWitchSpellsFirst LoveDesiresSeductionFlirtingWitchesWitchcraftAlpha MaleSinsSexualSinningLustfulFlirtDistance LoveTemptationsSeduceBad InfluenceCarnalBad RomanceSeduction StrategyFirst LovesBad Men
Book:Black Magic
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“Curst be the Gold and Silver which persuade Weak Men to follow far-fatiguing Trade! The Lilly-Peace outshines the silver Store, And Life is dearer than the golden Ore. Yet Money tempts us o'er the Desert brown, To ev'ry distant Mart and wealthy Town: Full oft we tempt the Land and Sea; And are we only yet repay'd by Thee? Ah! why was Ruin so attractive made, Or why fond Man so easily betrayed? -Eclogue the Second. Hassan; or the Camel-driver”

WealthMoneyTradeGreedTemptation
Book:Gray and Collins: Poetical Works
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“Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong." However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts. ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart.”

MenWomenBeautyWineGreedGenderSexualityLustTemptationHypocrisyMisogynyAdulteryDrunkennessStereotypesImmoralitySocial NormsDouble StandardsClichés
Book:Dives and Pauper
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“And yet, and yet; it is a strange dance that the Fool must learn as he encounters the Devil on his path. Like the serpent who offered Eve the fruit of knowledge, or Samuel who seduced Lilith away from paradise, all knowledge comes from darkness, and so we are drawn towards it. But darkness and evil are not the same thing. We go to the darkness willingly, so we can, as Cormac McCarthy wrote, “learn how to carry the fire”, but sojourn too long and we open the door to forces we may not be able to pry ourselves from. Indifference, doubt and scepticism form, as Kelly Braffet describes, the “logic that the Devil likes most”, to trap us into the conviction not just of the absence of evil, but more cynically, the non-existence of virtue. Thomas Aquinas rather beautifully defined sloth as "sorrow about spiritual good", for perhaps it is not that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is to convince the world that he doesn’t exist” (Baudelaire), but rather the far superior and more hellish of hoaxes, that God doesn’t either.”

GodFaithEvilGoodnessDevilTemptationSeduction
Book:THE MAP: Archetypes of the Major Arcana
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