TERMS STARTING WITH
temptationless ::: a. --> Having no temptation or motive; as, a temptationless sin.
temptation ::: n. --> The act of tempting, or enticing to evil; seduction.
The state of being tempted, or enticed to evil.
That which tempts; an inducement; an allurement, especially to something evil.
temptation ::: something that seduces or has the quality to allure or seduce. temptations.
Temptation in its better sense is trial, probation, and testing, such as a candidate for knowledge must necessarily incur. In its worse sense, temptation is the evocation of action in and from the human mind and emotions, either by outside impacts, or because of the undeveloped characteristics of the mind itself.
TERMS ANYWHERE
allurement ::: n. --> The act alluring; temptation; enticement.
That which allures; any real or apparent good held forth, or operating, as a motive to action; as, the allurements of pleasure, or of honor.
Asava (Sanskrit, Pali) Āsava [from the verbal root su to distill, make a decoction] A distilling or a decoction; a Buddhist term, difficult to render in European languages, signifying the distillation or decoction which the mind makes or produces from the impact upon it of outside energies or substances, whether these latter be thoughts or suggestions automatically arising and acting from outside upon us, or such as impinge upon the human consciousness from another consciousness striving to affect the former. Thus it corresponds in some respects to the Christian idea of temptation. Asava signifies attachments rising in the mind from the impact upon it of outside influences, and the ideas born of outside influences which intoxicate the mind, born in the mind or flowing into it and preventing its being held upon higher lines. Freedom from the asavas constitutes the essential of arhatship, which involves self-mastery in all its phases. The four asavas are enumerated in Southern Buddhism as 1) sensuousness and sensuality (kama); 2) hunger for life (bhava); 3) dreamy speculation (dittha); and 4) nescience (avijja).
attempt ::: v. t. --> To make trial or experiment of; to try; to endeavor to do or perform (some action); to assay; as, to attempt to sing; to attempt a bold flight.
To try to move, by entreaty, by afflictions, or by temptations; to tempt.
To try to win, subdue, or overcome; as, one who attempts the virtue of a woman.
To attack; to make an effort or attack upon; to try to
bait ::: v. i. --> Any substance, esp. food, used in catching fish, or other animals, by alluring them to a hook, snare, inclosure, or net.
Anything which allures; a lure; enticement; temptation.
A portion of food or drink, as a refreshment taken on a journey; also, a stop for rest and refreshment.
A light or hasty luncheon.
To stop to take a portion of food and drink for refreshment of one&
Barlaam and Josaphat. A Christian saint's tale that contains substantial elements drawn from the life of the Buddha. The story tells the tale of the Christian monk Barlaam's conversion of an Indian prince, Josaphat. (Josaphat is a corrupted transcription of the Sanskrit term BODHISATTVA, referring to GAUTAMA Buddha prior to his enlightenment.) The prince then undertakes the second Christian conversion of India, which, following the initial mission of the apostle Thomas, had reverted to paganism. For their efforts, both Barlaam and Josaphat were eventually listed by the Roman Catholic Church among the roster of saints (their festival day is November 27). There are obvious borrowings from Buddhist materials in the story of Josaphat's life. After the infant Josaphat's birth, for example, astrologers predict he either will become a powerful king or will embrace the Christian religion. To keep his son on the path to royalty, his pagan father has him ensconced in a fabulous palace so that he will not be exposed to Christianity. Josaphat grows dissatisfied with his virtual imprisonment, however, and the king eventually accedes to his son's request to leave the palace, where he comes across a sick man, a blind man, and an old man. He eventually meets the monk Barlaam, who instructs him using parables. Doctrines that exhibit possible parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, such as the emphasis on impermanence and the need to avoid worldly temptations, are a particular focus of Barlaam's teachings, and the account of the way of life followed by Barlaam and his colleagues has certain affinities with that of wandering Indian mendicants (sRAMAnA). By the late nineteenth century, the story of Barlaam and Josaphat was recognized to be a Christianized version of the life of the Buddha. The Greek version of the tale is attributed to "John the Monk," whom the Christian scholastic tradition assumed to be St. John of Damascus (c. 676-749). The tale was, however, first rendered into Greek from Georgian in the eleventh century, perhaps by Euthymius (d. 1028). The Georgian version, called the Balavariani, appears to be based on an Arabic version, KitAb Bilawhar wa BudhAsaf. The source of the Arabic version has not been identified, nor has the precise Buddhist text from which the Buddhist elements were drawn. After the Greek text was translated into Latin, the story was translated into many of the vernaculars of Europe, becoming one of the most popular saint's tales of the Middle Ages.
bodhi-sattva (Bodhi-sattwa) ::: in Mahayana Buddhism,"a being who, though having the right to enter Nirvana, deliberately renounces it, electing to work under the conditions and possibly renewed temptations of the world, for the love of one"s fellow man or of the whole sentient world" (The Theosophical Path, March 1915, p. 160).
temptationless ::: a. --> Having no temptation or motive; as, a temptationless sin.
temptation ::: n. --> The act of tempting, or enticing to evil; seduction.
The state of being tempted, or enticed to evil.
That which tempts; an inducement; an allurement, especially to something evil.
temptation ::: something that seduces or has the quality to allure or seduce. temptations.
circe ::: 1. In Classical Mythology. the enchantress represented by Homer as turning the companions of Odysseus into swine by means of a magic drink, therefore an alluring but dangerous temptress or temptation.
conquer ::: v. t. --> To gain or acquire by force; to take possession of by violent means; to gain dominion over; to subdue by physical means; to reduce; to overcome by force of arms; to cause to yield; to vanquish.
To subdue or overcome by mental or moral power; to surmount; as, to conquer difficulties, temptation, etc.
To gain or obtain, overcoming obstacles in the way; to win; as, to conquer freedom; to conquer a peace.
Cosmically, the sun is the beating heart of the solar system, and the sunspot cycle of approximately 12 years represents the cycle of its beating, as it sends forth and receives back the circulations on many planes which sustain the solar system. The sun is “a beating heart; in another sense, it is a brain. There is a temptation to use the words heart and brain literally, and such usage wanders not far from fact. But it is not the physical globe which is the true head and heart, except insofar as the physical universe is concerned. The real head and the real heart, coalescing and working as one, are the divinity behind and above and within the physical vehicle of our glorious daystar” (FSO 299; cf SD 1:541-2).
Courage: In ethical discussions courage is usually regarded as a virtue (it is one of the traditional cardinal virtues), and either enjoined as a duty or praised as an excellence. When thus regarded as a virtue, courage is generally said to be a disposition, not merely instinctive, to exhibit a certain firmness, stopping short of rashness, in the face of danger, threat, temptation, pain, public opinion, etc. (thus including "moral" as well as physical courage, and passive courage or "fortitude" as well as active courage); which disposition, if it is to be a virtue, must, it is thought, be exhibited in the course of what the bearer knows or believes to be his duty, or at least in the support of some cause to which one is seriously committed or which is generally regarded as worthwhile. -- W.K.F.
Events in cosmic evolution and emanation were told under the guise of fairy tales such as the above, in order to hide the meaning from those whose right to know had not yet been established through proper training, self-devotion to truth, and renunciation of the temptations of ordinary life. Here Vach is the feminine form of the Logos, and Brahma is the masculine form; the Logos is a unit, but when worlds are evolved it produces from itself its alter ego for the purpose of the ensuing manvantara, which is called the feminine Logos in which the masculine Logos of intelligence drops the seeds of thought, and from the spiritual matter or feminine Logos emanate the hierarchies of beings. The two aspects of the Logos are inseparable, but appear as a manifested duality only at the very beginnings of manvantaric time. It is thus seen that when Brahma emanates Vach as one half of his body or self, it means that for the purposes of manvantaric emanational productions, the Logos enters upon its creative activities. Brahma in this case becomes what would in the Christian Trinity be called the Father, Vach the Holy Spirit (always feminine among the early Christians), out of which comes forth the third aspect of the Logos, the manifested Logos. Brahma therefore is the First or Unmanifest Logos, Vach the Second or Manifest-unmanifest Logos; the intelligence creating the hierarchies of beings is the Third or Manifesting Logos. Thus the three Logoi are yet but one, as the Christian Trinity is said to be composed of three persons or masks philosophically, and yet to form one Godhead or Godhood.
exposedness ::: n. --> The state of being exposed, laid open, or unprotected; as, an exposedness to sin or temptation.
Generally speaking, because of their menacing aspects, the term Dweller on the Threshold might be applied to the denizens of kama-loka, specifically to the past kama-lokic or astral remnants of a former incarnation which haunt the new imbodiment of that reincarnating ego. A person who gives way to strongly material impulse and desires forms for himself a kama-rupa which, when the person dies, can persist without undergoing complete dissolution until the quick return of such materially-minded human soul to reincarnation, when the kama-rupa is then strongly attracted to the person thus reimbodied and haunts him as an evil genius, continually instilling by automatic psychomagnetic action thoughts and impulses of evil, temptations, and suggestions of fear and terror — all of which the person himself was responsible for in his last life.
In Classical Mythology. the enchantress represented by Homer as turning the companions of Odysseus into swine by means of a magic drink, therefore an alluring but dangerous temptress or temptation.
Just as the serpent is connected with knowledge, wisdom, and magic, whether of the right- or left-hand path, so likewise has copper or brass since immemorial time in all mystic schools been a metallic compound supposed to be under the particular governance of the planet Venus, which is the ruler or controller of the human higher manas — manas being at once the savior as well as the tempter of mankind, for it is in the mind where temptation and sin or evildoing ultimately arise. See also SERPENT.
Kandu (Sanskrit) Kaṇḍu In the Puranas, a sage and yogi whose holiness and pious austerities awakened the jealousy of the gods. Kamadeva, as lord of the gods, sent one of his apsarasas, Pramlocha, to tempt the sage. He lived with her for several centuries, which seemed to him only as one day. Finally the sage, returning to his senses, repudiated her and chased her away, whereupon she gave birth to a daughter, Marisha, in an extraordinary manner. Blavatsky compares this legend to the temptation of Merlin by Vivien, and Sarah’s temptation of Pharaoh in the Old Testament (SD 2:174-5&n).
Mahamara (Sanskrit) Mahāmāra [from mahā great + māra death from the verbal root mṛ to die] The great destroyer; the king of the maras (temptations), and often called the Great Ensnarer. This character is usually represented “with a crown in which shines a jewel of such lustre that it blinds those who look at it, this lustre referring of course to the fascination exercised by vice upon certain natures” (VS 76). It is due to the power of maya or seductive illusion that mahamara or the different maras possess their sway over sentient beings.
Maxim, ethical: In general any rule of conduct which an individual may adopt, or which he may be advised to follow as a good guide for action, e.g., Descartes' maxim to try always to conquer himself rather than fortune. The formulation of such rules is often recommended as a help in deciding what to do in particular cases, especially if time is short, in resisting temptation, etc. Kant held (1) that each voluntary act proceeds according to a maxim or "subjective principle of action," e.g., in breaking a promise one has as one's maxim, "When it is to my advantage, I will make a promise and not keep it," (2) that one can tell whether an act is right or not by asking whether one can will its maxim to be a universal law. -- W.K.F.
More commonly, a practitioner of one or more various subordinate branches of yoga. There are many grades and kinds of yogis, and the term has become in India a generic name for every kind of ascetic. “In some cases, yogins are men who strive in various ways to conquer the body and physical temptations, for instance by torture of the body. They also study more or less some of the magnificent philosophical teachings of India coming down from far-distant ages of the past; but mere mental study will not make a man a Mahatma, nor will any torture of the body bring about the spiritual vision — the Vision Sublime” (OG 183).
Mu (Senzar) Destruction of temptation; a portion of the mystic word in Northern Buddhism (TG 217).
Nephandus, Nephandi: “Dark reflection” mages who pursue the Path of Descent; infamous for corruption, temptation, misdirection, and deception.
not tempted; unassailed by temptation.
Pandora (Greek) All-gifted; in Greek mythology, after Prometheus enlightened man by bringing him the celestial fire, the enraged Zeus revenges himself by seducing man, for which purpose he has Hephaestos create a woman, Pandora, endowed with gifts from the great gods. She is brought to Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus (“after-thought,” the brother of “fore-thought”), bringing with her a locked box containing all human ills, which she opens from curiosity, and the ills spread over the earth. Hesiod calls her the first woman, sent as a punishment to man for his theft of the divine fire. It evidently means that as soon as he quits his passive irresponsible state and acquires active will and intellect, man subjects himself to temptations from the lower world. Pandora is an earthly aspect of all-bounteous nature; a later interpretation of the story of the box makes it the container of blessings, which however fly away when it is opened, leaving behind only hope.
Probation The process of testing undergone by an aspirant to initiation, who may be simply watched to see how he will meet the temptations and trials of life, or may be caused to encounter certain experiences specially designed to test his powers. The latter is very rare and appertains only to certain conditions of occult training. Life is the great school, and a person tests himself by his actions and reactions to himself and to surrounding nature. He alone thus defines or classifies himself. A candidate taking a vow places himself under such specific watching because he has issued a challenge to his lower nature, which thereupon begins a defensive warfare against him. The process is similar in principle to that undergone by an aspirant to a position of responsibility in worldly affairs, but the aspirant to wisdom has to dig deep into his own nature: he arrays against himself powers that formerly slept, ventures into regions where unknown dangers must be encountered, and by his own will and intelligence climbs the ladder to luminous victory and undreamed of success, or if he fails — he fails but to try again.
Solomon the Wise is a type-figure, and the legendary story of his life, wisdom and glory, and temptations and apparent fall, is a variant of the traditional history of certain wise ones recounted in every world-religion. Even granting that a king names Shelomoh reigned over Judah and Israel, the Biblical account and the many traditions of his life are an allegory of initiation.
strive ::: v. i. --> To make efforts; to use exertions; to endeavor with earnestness; to labor hard.
To struggle in opposition; to be in contention or dispute; to contend; to contest; -- followed by against or with before the person or thing opposed; as, strive against temptation; strive for the truth.
To vie; to compete; to be a rival.
Such hybrid symbols may, like the Siren and the Lorelei, likewise signify the astral light and the temptations of the Hall of Delusion, or the incubi and succubi, originating in the Near East and distorted as entities by the monkish imagination of the Middle Ages.
temptability ::: n. --> The quality or state of being temptable; lability to temptation.
Temptation in its better sense is trial, probation, and testing, such as a candidate for knowledge must necessarily incur. In its worse sense, temptation is the evocation of action in and from the human mind and emotions, either by outside impacts, or because of the undeveloped characteristics of the mind itself.
Tempter In general, the human mind, whether reacting to outside impulsions or impressions, or from within its own relatively small and uninspired powers; it has been commonly typified by the dragon, Satan, Zeus, etc. “Zeus is represented as a serpent — the intellectual tempter of man — which, nevertheless, begets in the course of cyclic evolution the ‘Man-Saviour,’ the solar Bacchus or ‘Dionysus,’ more than a man” (SD 2:419-20). Indeed, often it is our higher nature which “tempts” us upwards by calling forth latent or inner powers which, once evoked, are the ladder by which we climb. Thus our tempter is also our redeemer. The esoteric teaching of the tempting of humankind by awakening in its light of intellect has been materialized into a sensual temptation by a Devil in the Garden of Eden; and in the Bible, an evolutionary phase has been theologically degraded into a sin. The astral light is also spoken of as the tempter, especially by Eliphas Levi.
tentation ::: n. --> Trial; temptation.
A mode of adjusting or operating by repeated trials or experiments.
The hostiles when they cannot break the yoga by positive means, by positive temptations or vital outbreaks, are quite will- ing to do it negatively ; first by depression, then by refusal at once of ordinary life and of sadhana.
The older Hebrews had no such devil; the word Satan is nearly always used in the ordinary sense of adversary. In Job, Satan is an emissary of God, one of his sons, charged with a mission to test Job. The original Hebrew God is supreme, author of both good and evil. But with the later Hebrews the idea underwent modification, and the notion of an evil deity arose, possibly from an adoption of Persian dualism acquired during the captivity. At the time the Gospels were written it is evident that the idea of a prince of darkness was very real and ever-present, though the story of the temptation of Jesus is evidently a picture of the triumph of an initiate over the forces of terrestrial nature.
to resist the temptations or the person of the arch¬
Wittgenstein's doctrines were a major influence in the evolution of Logical Positivism (q.v.) though his later work is out of sympathy with that movement. Later lectures (in the form of unpublished mimeographed notes) embody a more relativistic approach to language, and are largely devoted to the inculcation of a therapeutic method directed against the perennial temptation to ask senseless questions in philosophy.
Yogi(Yogin, Sanskrit) ::: A yogi is a devotee, one who practices the Yoga system or one or more of its varioussubordinate branches.In some cases, yogis are those who strive in various ways to conquer the body and physical temptations,for instance by torture of the body. They also study more or less some of the magnificent philosophicalteachings of India coming down from far distant ages of the past; but mere mental study will not make aman a mahatma, nor will any torture of the body bring about the spiritual vision -- the vision sublime.(See also Yoga)
KEYS (10k)
4 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Thomas A Kempis
1 William Butler Yeats
1 SWAMI RAMA
1 Saint Robert Bellarmine
1 Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
1 Ramakrishna
1 Our Lady of Revelation
1 M P Pandit
1 J. Tauler. Institutions
1 James I 12
1 James 1. 2
1 Anonymous
1 Sri Aurobindo
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
46 Anonymous
20 C S Lewis
17 John Owen
14 Martin Luther
12 Oscar Wilde
9 Henry Ward Beecher
8 Thomas Merton
8 Louisa May Alcott
7 Thomas Kempis
7 Paulo Coelho
7 Oswald Chambers
7 Gretchen Rubin
6 Thomas a Kempis
6 Saint Francis de Sales
6 Russell D Moore
6 Matthew Henry
6 John Bunyan
6 Charlotte Bront
6 Alexander McCall Smith
5 Toba Beta
1:Pray, lest ye enter into temptation. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Luke, 22:40, #KEYS
2:Blessed is the man that endureth temptation. ~ James I 12, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
3:World bound men, cannot resist the temptation of women and gold and direct their minds to God. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
4:Be on guard against temptation when living in the world; once fallen into that well, one can hardly come out of it pure and stainless. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
5:Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. ~ William Butler Yeats, #KEYS
6:I am wont to visit My elect in two ways -- by temptation and by consolation. To them I read two lessons daily -- one reproving their vices, the other exhorting them to progress in virtue. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
7:Write My words in your heart and meditate on them earnestly, for in time of temptation they will be very necessary. What you do not understand when you read, you will learn in the day of visitation. ~ Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, #KEYS
8:302. The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#KEYS
9:There is not much virtue in going down the slope; all can do that for the natural gravitation of the consciousness is downward. He is the hero who resists the temptation to let himself slip, even for a moment, even to the extent of a hairs breadth.
~ M P Pandit,#KEYS
10:Many objects of temptation are there in front of you, and the mind is a rascal. No matter how much you educate it, it will run only in that direction. How many have the power to stop that? So it is best to stay away from the objects of temptations. ~ Swami Adbhutananda, #KEYS
11:No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 1 Corinthians, 10:13, #KEYS
12:More interesting than to demonstrate the Christian Faith, would be to set out a temptation... to describe it with plenty of detail, to show forth its wonderful cohesion with force enough to make the unbeliever giddy, and leave nothing for him but to plunge in. ~ Jacques Rivière, #KEYS
13:We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out,-and having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. ~ Timothy VI.7, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
14:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#KEYS
15:And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Matthew, 6:7-14,#KEYS
16:55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.08, #KEYS
17:My sweet mother, The more I look into myself, the more discouraged I am, and I don't know whether there is any chance of my making any progress. It seems that all the obscurities and falsehoods are rising up on every side, inside and outside, and want to swallow me up. There are times when I cannot distinguish truth from falsehood and I am then on the verge of losing my mind.
Still, there is something in me which says very weakly that all will be well; but this voice is so feeble that I cannot rely on it.1
My faults are so numerous and so great that I think I shall fail. On the other hand, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity for the ordinary life. And I know that I shall never be able to leave this life. This is my situation right now. The struggle is getting more and more acute, and worst of all I cannot lie to you. What should I do?
Do not torment yourself, my child, and remain as quiet as you can; do not yield to the temptation to give up the struggle and let yourself fall into darkness. Persist, and one day you will realise that I am close to you to console you and help you, and then the hardest part will be over. With all my love and blessings. 25 September 1947
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother,#KEYS
18:Worthy The Name Of Sir Knight
Sir Knight of the world's oldest order,
Sir Knight of the Army of God,
You have crossed the strange mystical border,
The ground floor of truth you have trod;
You have entered the sanctum sanctorum,
Which leads to the temple above,
Where you come as a stone, and a Christ-chosen one,
In the kingdom of Friendship and Love.
II
As you stand in this new realm of beauty,
Where each man you meet is your friend,
Think not that your promise of duty
In hall, or asylum, shall end;
Outside, in the great world of pleasure,
Beyond, in the clamor of trade,
In the battle of life and its coarse daily strife
Remember the vows you have made.
III
Your service, majestic and solemn,
Your symbols, suggestive and sweet,
Your uniformed phalanx in column
On gala days marching the street;
Your sword and your plume and your helmet,
Your 'secrets' hid from the world's sight;
These things are the small, lesser parts of the all
Which are needed to form the true Knight.
IV
The martyrs who perished rejoicing
In Templary's glorious laws,
Who died 'midst the fagots while voicing
The glory and worth of their cause-
935
They honored the title of 'Templar'
No more than the Knight of to-day
Who mars not the name with one blemish of shame,
But carries it clean through life's fray.
To live for a cause, to endeavor
To make your deeds grace it, to try
And uphold its precepts forever,
Is harder by far than to die.
For the battle of life is unending,
The enemy, Self, never tires,
And the true Knight must slay that sly foe every day
Ere he reaches the heights he desires.
VI
Sir Knight, have you pondered the meaning
Of all you have heard and been told?
Have you strengthened your heart for its weaning
From vices and faults loved of old?
Will you honor, in hours of temptation,
Your promises noble and grand?
Will your spirit be strong to do battle with wrong,
'And having done all, to stand?'
VII
Will you ever be true to a brother
In actions as well as in creed?
Will you stand by his side as no other
Could stand in the hour of his need?
Will you boldly defend him from peril,
And lift him from poverty's curseWill the promise of aid which you willingly made,
Reach down from your lips to your purse?
VIII
The world's battle field is before you!
Let Wisdom walk close by your side,
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Let Faith spread her snowy wings o'er you,
Let Truth be your comrade and guide;
Let Fortitude, Justice and Mercy
Direct all your conduct aright,
And let each word and act tell to men the proud fact,
You are worthy the name of 'Sir Knight'.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:There's a lesson in every temptation. ~ frank-herbert, @wisdomtrove 2:Virtue is insufficient temptation. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 3:Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 4:Capacity for joy Admits temptation. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove 5:I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. ~ mae-west, @wisdomtrove 6:I Resist the Temptation to Judge Others. ~ jonathan-lockwood-huie, @wisdomtrove 7:Don't tempt me I can resist anything but temptation. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 8:Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 9:Remove the temptation of idleness and Cupid's bow is useless. ~ ovid, @wisdomtrove 10:The noble temptation to see too much in everything. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 11:The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 12:Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 13:The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 14:No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 15:The higher the stakes, the greater the temptation to lose your temper. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 16:Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a karmic experience of negativity. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 17:Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 18:That's the temptation of the devil: "Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!" ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 19:There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 20:The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove 21:Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. ~ ambrose-bierce, @wisdomtrove 22:Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking. ~ francis-crick, @wisdomtrove 23:Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 24:The Simpsons, TV Series (1989– ). "The Last Temptation of Krust", www.imdb.com. 1998. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove 25:Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 26:If we didn't have to stand against temptation, we'd never know our own spiritual strength. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 27:Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead. ~ henry-wadsworth-longfellow, @wisdomtrove 28:No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove 29:There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 30:There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 31:Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 32:I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame And every time I pass that way I always hear my name ~ bob-dylan, @wisdomtrove 33:I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 34:Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 35:Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 36:For they who think they make an end of temptation by yeilding to it, only set themselves on fire the more. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 37:Temptation is the feeling we get when encountered by an opportunity to do what we innately know we shouldn't. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 38:Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 39:The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 40:Has there not been, sometimes, this temptation to do a great deal for Christ, but not to live a great deal with Christ? ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 41:If you decide that you cannot beat a temptation, what you are really doing is giving yourself permission to be irresponsible. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 42:Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 43:And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning & 44:No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good... Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 45:If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 46:... there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 47:Learning takes us through many states of life, but it fails utterly in the hour of danger and temptation. Then faith alone saves. ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove 48:There is nothing new about humanism. It is the yielding to Satan's first temptation of Adam and Eve: "Ye shall be as gods." (Gen. 3:5) ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 49:All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 50:Moralists and philosophers have adjudged those who throw temptation in the way of the erring, equally guilty with those who are thereby led into evil. ~ mark-twain, @wisdomtrove 51:Only the desert has a fascination& 52:A temptation arises: it is the wind. It disturbs you: it is the surging of the seas. This is the time to awaken Christ and let Him remind you of these words ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 53:Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 54:Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the instruments of love. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 55:As ministers our greatest temptation is toward too many words. They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 56:But precisely this illusion that everything is "clear" is what is blinding us all. It is a serious temptation, and it is a subtle form of pride and worldly love of power and revenge. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 57:The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing... is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 58:The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect& 59:Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head, but don't be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud, one is safe from the worst form of pride. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 60:No one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. Lust is never very far away. And just when you least expect it, there it is again. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 61:Where unclarity resides, there is temptation, and there it proves only too easily the stronger. Wherever there is ambiguity, wherever there is wavering, there is disobedience down at the bottom. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 62:Quite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how "open" you are, you'll end up surrounded by "yes people." It's hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove 63:Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there. ~ alice-walker, @wisdomtrove 64:The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (... ) these three skills ‚ self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most‚ are the foundation for self-control. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove 65:Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief. The lords prayer is less than 50 words long, and 6 of those words are devoted to asking god not to lead us into temptation. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 66:You are out of the way of temptation and out of the way of the tempter - I didn't mean to make you wicked - but I was - and am - and shall be - and I was with you so much that I couldn't help contaminate. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove 67:Man has always been dexterous at confusing evil with good. That was Adam's and Eve's problem, and it is our problem today. If evil were not made to appear attractive, there would be no such thing as temptation. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 68:Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 69:At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself. ~ jean-paul-sartre, @wisdomtrove 70:I'm here today to warn you: I want you to watch out for the adversary. Guard yourself from any spirit of entitlement. Restrain any and all subtle temptation to gain attention or to find ways to promote yourself. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 71:Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. George Bernard Shaw ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove 72:It is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 73:The more we see that any action springs not from the motive of obedience, the more evident is it that it is a temptation of the enemy; for when God sends an inspiration, the very first effect of it is to infuse a spirit of docility. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 74:Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 75:If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 76:This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea, and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 77:After an error you need not only to remove the causes but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an & 78:Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 79:Youd get very rich if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. Youd resist the temptation to dabble. Youd make more good decisions and youd make more big decisions. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 80:For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward. ~ erma-bombeck, @wisdomtrove 81:The most critical case in a corporation, especially a big one, is when everything goes well, when you have accomplished your objectives. When the temptation is to work twice as hard instead of saying, "We have accomplished our objectives, we have to think again." ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove 82:What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 83:For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren't able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment. ~ john-wooden, @wisdomtrove 84: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, @wisdomtrove 85:The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove 86:There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 87:All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide. Every one of them knows very well in some corner of his soul that suicide, though a way out, is rather a mean and shabby one, and that it is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one's own hand. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 88:You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip. ~ william-somerset-maugham, @wisdomtrove 89:I choose joy... I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical... the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 90:Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 91:A temptation is the universe's gracious way of allowing a soul to evolve without creating negative karma. In other words, a temptation is like a magnet that draws to awareness, negativity, that would otherwise create negative karma if it remained unconscious. A temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic act. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 92:Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means‚Äîthe only complete realist. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 93:Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 94:Every temptation that is resisted, every evil thought that is curbed, every desire that is subdued, every bitter word that is withheld, every noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sublime thought that is cultivated, adds to the development of will-force, good character, and attainment of eternal bliss and immortality. ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 95:I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking ourselves up each time... The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give up. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 96:Where faith is not continually kept in motion and exercised, it weakens and decreases, so that it must indeed vanish; and yet we do not see nor feel this weakness ourselves, except in times of need and temptation, when unbelief rages too strongly; and yet for that very reason faith must have temptations in which it may battle and grow. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 97: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, @wisdomtrove 98:Do you really think ... that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not - there is no weakness in that. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 99:This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero! ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove 100:The best way to show your gratitude to God and people is to accept everything with joy... .We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs from a heart that is in love with God. All over the world people are hungry and thirsty for God's love. We meet that hunger by spreading joy. Joy is one of the best safeguards against temptation. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 101:Had (I) been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort ~ booker-t-washington, @wisdomtrove 102:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies ‚ for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry ‚ I say to myself, ‚What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home. ~ jorge-luis-borges, @wisdomtrove 103:Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 104:Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 105: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, @wisdomtrove 106:If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 107:So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 108:Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 109:To forgive another from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. As long as we do not forgive we pull them with us, or worse, as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies & then define ourselves as being offended & wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves. It is the way to the freedom of the children of God. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 110:Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action - the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors - is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 111:The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 112:Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove 113:If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove 114:The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses& 115:If you do not feel deserving of happiness, consciously or subconsciously, or if you have accepted the idea that happiness is somehow wrong or cannot last, you will not respond appropriately when happiness comes knocking at your door in the form of romantic love. No matter how much you may have waited and cried, you will not welcome love when it arrives-you will find a way to sabotage it. What a challenge to resist this temptation! What an opportunity for true spiritual growth and transformation-to defy your negative feelings and honor the gift that life offers you! ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Choices enable temptation. ~ Toba Beta, #NFDB
2:Let my temptation be a book. ~ Eugene Field, #NFDB
3:Saintliness is also a temptation. ~ Jean Anouilh, #NFDB
4:Everything else is temptation. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
5:Temptation to behave is terrible. ~ Bertolt Brecht, #NFDB
6:is able to resist that temptation. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
7:Pray that ye enter not into temptation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
8:A woman reading is a grave temptation. ~ Rebecca Lee, #NFDB
9:Sin was a powerful temptation, indeed ~ Suzanne Enoch, #NFDB
10:There's a lesson in every temptation. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
11:I can resist everything but temptation, ~ Alan Russell, #NFDB
12:I deal with temptation by yielding to it. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
13:Miracles are the devil’s temptation. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
14:Power was my weakness and my temptation. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
15:The whisper is a devil’s temptation. ~ Charmaine Pauls, #NFDB
16:Put temptation on the unenjoyment line. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
17:Terrible is the temptation to be good. ~ Bertolt Brecht, #NFDB
18:Turned to religion in times of temptation. ~ James Lear, #NFDB
19:Which is scarier-- lust or temptation? ~ Craig Thompson, #NFDB
20:I can resist everything except temptation. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
21:Temptation: the fiend at my elbow. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
22:Virtue is insufficient temptation. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
23:Blessed is the man that endureth temptation. ~ James I 12, #NFDB
24:He, who loves praise, loves temptation. ~ Thomas F Wilson, #NFDB
25:Expect temptation to your last breath. ~ Anthony the Great, #NFDB
26:. Temptation leads down a path of destruction ~ Kim Holden, #NFDB
27:The only thing I can't resist is temptation. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
28:He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
29:Temptation provokes me to look upward to God. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
30:The only thing I cannot resist is temptation. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
31:he resisted the temptation to avoid suffering ~ Bruce A Ware, #NFDB
32:The silence was always the greates temptation. ~ Markus Zusak, #NFDB
33:Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
34:Why resist temptation? There will always be more. ~ Don Herold, #NFDB
35:I resist the temptation to curate my apartment. ~ Thelma Golden, #NFDB
36:resist the temptation to jump to a solution; ~ Mary Poppendieck, #NFDB
37:There is no temptation from outside the heart. ~ Barbara Hambly, #NFDB
38:Capacity for joy Admits temptation. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, #NFDB
39:Don't tempt me, I can resist anything but temptation. ~ Bob Hope, #NFDB
40:Safety is an illusion, as is faith without temptation. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
41:I can resist everything but the temptation of you. ~ Truth Devour, #NFDB
42:I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. ~ Mae West, #NFDB
43:Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
44:The only way to beat temptation is to give in to it ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
45:Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue. ~ Agnes Repplier, #NFDB
46:It is a temptation for me to wear all my rings at once. ~ Anna Held, #NFDB
47:Resist the temptation to see yourself as a victim. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
48:Anything is a temptation to those who dread it. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB
49:Remove the temptation of idleness and Cupid's bow is useless. ~ Ovid, #NFDB
50:Teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation ~ Jerome Bruner, #NFDB
51:Nothing can shake him, no temptation or anything. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
52:The fastest way to escape temptation is to surrender. ~ Morgan Blayde, #NFDB
53:Vanity is a natural object of temptation to a woman. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
54:If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
55:Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
56:Without temptation, there was no virtue in resistance. ~ Cherie Priest, #NFDB
57:I am too impatient to wait for temptation to come to me. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
58:It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation, ~ Rudyard Kipling, #NFDB
59:Lead me not into temptation. I can find the way myself. ~ Jane Seabrook, #NFDB
60:Temptation has been here ever since the Garden of Eden. ~ Jerry Falwell, #NFDB
61:We gain the strength of the temptation we resist. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
62:Ignoring a temptation is far more effective than fighting. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
63:It's always easier to avoid temptation than to resist it. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
64:Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself. ~ Rita Mae Brown, #NFDB
65:That's the problem with temptation. It's so damn tempting. ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
66:There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it. ~ Honore de Balzac, #NFDB
67:Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
68:Pray, lest ye enter into temptation. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, Luke, 22:40, #NFDB
69:The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
70:Yield to temptation...it may not pass your way again! ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
71:Beware of the temptation to see yourself as unfairly treated. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
72:I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
73:The noble temptation to see too much in everything. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
74:The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil. ~ Thomas Malthus, #NFDB
75:Don’t they see it? Can’t they recognize the temptation? ~ Michael D O Brien, #NFDB
76:The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
77:Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself. (T-Shirt) ~ Darynda Jones, #NFDB
78:Perhaps God was testing him with man’s greatest temptation. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
79:Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
80:The best thing there is to do when there is temptation is run. ~ Johnny Hunt, #NFDB
81:The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
82:The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
83:The temptation to entertain instead of selling is contagious. ~ David Ogilvy, #NFDB
84:What's the good of resisting temptation? There'll always be more. ~ Mae West, #NFDB
85:If you play with temptation do not expect God will deliver you ~ Mary Slessor, #NFDB
86:Satan’s chief device of temptation is to attack the truth of God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
87:A vow of celibacy was easy to hold when there was no temptation. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
88:If your middle name is Temptation, then mine is Persistence ~ Stephanie Laurens, #NFDB
89:The temptation of the age is to look good without being good. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
90:We must resist the temptation to romanticize history's losers. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
91:Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
92:Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory. ~ Frederick William Faber, #NFDB
93:Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
94:The absence of temptation is the absence of virtue. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #NFDB
95:Every time you resist temptation you are winning for your children. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
96:History fancies itself linear - but yields to a cyclical temptation. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
97:Temptation is not a sin but playing with temptation invites sin. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
98:Every time we resist the slightest temptation, we honor God. Every ~ Robert Morgan, #NFDB
99:I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
100:Let my temptation be a book, which I shall purchase, hold and keep. ~ Eugene Field, #NFDB
101:No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
102:Opportunity, after all, is only another word for temptation. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald, #NFDB
103:Temptation is natural. That doesn’t mean you should act on it.” He ~ Penelope Ward, #NFDB
104:Temptation is the fire that brings up the scum of the heart. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
105:The future is always present, as a promise, a lure and a temptation. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
106:The higher the stakes, the greater the temptation to lose your temper. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
107:Feeling so rush to be proficient is
a common temptation for newbies. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
108:Looking at him was like looking into the beautiful face of temptation. ~ Lily White, #NFDB
109:Temptation is a dress rehearsal for a karmic experience of negativity. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
110:There isn't any virtue where there has never been any temptation. ~ Margaret Deland, #NFDB
111:Weakness is giving in to temptation. Strength is resisting it. ~ Guillermo del Toro, #NFDB
112:Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God. ~ John Quincy Adams, #NFDB
113:Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it. ~ Sam Levenson, #NFDB
114:The only way to banish temptation is to give in to it," the saying went. ~ Nikki Sex, #NFDB
115:The temptation to forget is woven into the fabric of these... costumes. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
116:wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to temptation! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey, #NFDB
117:Opportunity may knock only once but temptation leans on the door bell ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
118:We usually know what we can do, but temptation shows us who we are. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
119:Temptation leans on the doorbell, but opportunity knocks only once. ~ Malorie Blackman, #NFDB
120:The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance. ~ Laurence J Peter, #NFDB
121:There is no memory less satisfying than a temptation that we resisted. ~ Erin McCarthy, #NFDB
122:Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
123:There can be no faith without doubt. No strength without temptation. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
124:Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable? ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
125:every time I am about to follow my heart, I am offered enormous temptation. ~ Po Bronson, #NFDB
126:Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
127:mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power. ~ Glenn Greenwald, #NFDB
128:Temptation is a clever craftsman. He is able to make small things loom large. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
129:That's the temptation of the devil: "Turn stones into bread! Be relevant!" ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
130:there’s just one rule with no exceptions: before victory comes temptation. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
131:What was it Oscar Wilde said?” “I can resist everything except temptation. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
132:After every temptation you will be either closer to God or further from Him. ~ Jason Evert, #NFDB
133:Come, Lord Jesus, put an end to this state of sin, sorrow, and temptation; ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
134:No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, #NFDB
135:Only strong characters can resist the temptation of superficial analysis. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
136:Oscar Wilde’s comment about being able to resist everything except temptation. ~ Mark Pryor, #NFDB
137:The essence of temptation is the invitation to live independently of God. ~ Neil T Anderson, #NFDB
138:If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
139:Confusing the weight of sins actually hurts our ability to resist temptation. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
140:We're all going to be victims of temptation at several points in our lives. ~ Smokey Robinson, #NFDB
141:Holiness is not freedom from temptation, but power to overcome temptation. ~ G Campbell Morgan, #NFDB
142:It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
143:Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
144:The Eyes are the organs of temptation, and the Ears are the organs of instruction. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
145:Those green eyes were the devil’s lure, beckoning her toward temptation. ~ Michelle Willingham, #NFDB
146:you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation. ~ Elizabeth Kostova, #NFDB
147:That's what I loved about Temptation Island. I don't even know why they did it. ~ Kathy Griffin, #NFDB
148:We've all of us got to meet the devil alone. Temptation is a lonely business. ~ Margaret Deland, #NFDB
149:Looking straight into Rochelle's eyes he adds, "I don't cave in to temptation. ~ Marianne Curley, #NFDB
150:My free will was compromised, if only by the severe temptation of the unknown. ~ Jeff VanderMeer, #NFDB
151:Temptation is necessary to make us realize that we are nothing in ourselves. ~ Josemaria Escriva, #NFDB
152:There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
153:There can be no faith without doubt. No strength without temptation. (Rafael) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
154:...the sweetest temptation could be that which was known to be the most foolish. ~ Piers Anthony, #NFDB
155:God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
156:If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have power and you can resist temptation! ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
157:I have the financial morals of a goldfish, I can resist everything but temptation. ~ Ruth St Denis, #NFDB
158:It is no credit to me to do right. I am never under any temptation to do wrong! ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
159:Martin Luther used to say temptation is the best teacher for a minister. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
160:Oscar Wilde’s advice, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
161:Resistance to temptation means taking desire seriously. Both Jesus and Satan do. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
162:We pray, 'lead us not into temptation'. Do we then lead ourselves into temptation? ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
163:A priest encounters temptation every day, and some of that desire is very natural. ~ Park Chan wook, #NFDB
164:I have always espoused chastity except when one can no longer resist the temptation. ~ Edna O Brien, #NFDB
165:Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your front door forever. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher, #NFDB
166:Righteousness is innocence that has been maintained in the presence of temptation. ~ J Vernon McGee, #NFDB
167:The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
168:The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. ~ T S Eliot, #NFDB
169:When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation. ~ Elizabeth Kostova, #NFDB
170:The realization of God's presence is the one sovereign remedy against temptation. ~ Francois Fenelon, #NFDB
171:There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity. ~ Andy Hargreaves, #NFDB
172:Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
173:Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking. ~ Francis Crick, #NFDB
174:Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in gay, fine colours, that are but skin-deep. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
175:Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
176:She was too much for me. Too much work, too much temptation, far too much addiction. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
177:Temptation cannot exist without the concurrence of inclination and opportunity. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin, #NFDB
178:temptation to be interesting rather than technically effective is a dangerous one. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
179:When there is no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or himsa. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
180:I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure. ~ Malcolm Lowry, #NFDB
181:Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
182:What is merely a hypothesis to anyone else is an overwhelming temptation to a wizard. ~ Barbara Hambly, #NFDB
183:Temptation is stronger in the minds of people who are in doubt.
Prayer makes it weaker. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
184:We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
185:When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers. ~ Gerald Jampolsky, #NFDB
186:ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
187:It was not a safe thing to lead Joe into temptation; he had no resistance to it at all. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
188:Preachers must always fight the temptation to preach anything but Christ and Him crucified. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
189:That was my nature - going from temptation after temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
190:A small temptation can stop a great glory and turn great joy into a great sorrow ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
191:By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
192:Could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
193:I have been exposed to a great amount of temptation throughout the course of my career. ~ DeForest Kelley, #NFDB
194:Temptation was the color white. It was black ink, quivering at the point of a pen's nib. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
195:An angel sent from Heaven who is without a doubt always going to be my greatest temptation. ~ Harper Sloan, #NFDB
196:Gratitude and mindfulness are like chopsticks. You need both to hold the food of temptation. As ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
197:It is too late if we wait until the moment of temptation before making our decision. ~ Nathan Eldon Tanner, #NFDB
198:Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives whom we call dead. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, #NFDB
199:The path of temptation is gradual and intelligent, not as sudden and random as it seems. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
200:The virtue which has never been attacked by temptation is deserving of no monument. ~ Madeleine de Scudery, #NFDB
201:One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers. ~ James Russell Lowell, #NFDB
202:Renew your resolution daily, and in the hour of temptation do not depart from the right path. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
203:When you fly from temptation, don't leave a forwarding address. Where there's smoke there's fire. ~ Plautus, #NFDB
204:...his lips were pure temptation, soft, bitable, sensual in a way only a man's mouth could be. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
205:I never wanted the temptation to imitate or emulate something that had been done beforehand. ~ Tyler Hoechlin, #NFDB
206:The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
207:The people who need to overcome temptation to the highest degree have the hardest time doing it. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
208:I often long to . . . give up my life to love of my neighbour. This is really a temptation. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
209:Soul's Castle fell at one blast of temptation, But many a worm had pierced the foundation. ~ William Allingham, #NFDB
210:Temptation gains power by persistent solicitations that beget thoughts that make evil less serious ~ John Owen, #NFDB
211:Arranging to Fail Loophole: It’s odd. Instead of fleeing temptation, we often plan to succumb. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
212:Hold fast to your faith. Temptation is a given; look for the way out! It is possible to fall! ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
213:Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down ~ Edith Wharton, #NFDB
214:Remove yourself from temptation. Don't even look at something if you know you shouldn't have it. ~ Lucy Diamond, #NFDB
215:The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval. ~ Thomas Harris, #NFDB
216:Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
217:No man is worthy of unlimited reliance-his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
218:The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
219:There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
220:Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
221:Servitude, in many cases, is not forced upon by the masters, but a temptation of the servants. ~ Indro Montanelli, #NFDB
222:Try to keep the rebel artist alive in you, no matter how attractive or exhausting the temptation. ~ Arthur Miller, #NFDB
223:Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
224:Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil. ~ Solomon Northup, #NFDB
225:The devil can’t make you do anything! Resistance is not futile. You can overcome temptation. Where ~ Adam Hamilton, #NFDB
226:Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes. ~ E Stanley Jones, #NFDB
227:A temptation is Satan’s cheap substitute for the real gifts from heaven the Father has given us. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
228:But there was only so much temptation a man could resist without losing all respect for himself. ~ Michael Swanwick, #NFDB
229:Is it not a great temptation to be so valiant in imagination and so cowardly in execution? ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
230:It’s when people are tired that they’re the most vulnerable, most open to temptation. ~ Victoria Christopher Murray, #NFDB
231:The Idea: Our inability to clearly see the future clearly leads us into temptation and procrastination. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
232:There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
233:Tomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin doesn't. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
234:What happened when you gave in to temptation. When you listened to the fallen angels of your nature. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
235:Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority, perfect equality affords no temptation. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
236:Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
237:I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame And every time I pass that way I always hear my name ~ Bob Dylan, #NFDB
238:Knowledge of God's Word is a bulwark against deception, temptation, accusation, even persecution. ~ Edwin Louis Cole, #NFDB
239:There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted. ~ James Branch Cabell, #NFDB
240:The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
241:They who pray that they may not be led into temptation, must not lead themselves into temptation. 2. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
242:When God has not taken away our trouble or temptation yet, with His grace in our lives, we are content. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
243:By and large the United States has been able to resist the temptation to close its doors to the world. ~ Roger Mahony, #NFDB
244:Character is not developed in moments of temptation and trial. That is when it is intended to be used. ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
245:The first time the temptation comes, meet it in such a decided manner that it will never be repeated! ~ Ellen G White, #NFDB
246:The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
247:...the temptation, which consisted of a single word written on the cemetary of the defeated: Sleep. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
248:...high heels were always a temptation, but, like all temptations, one paid for them later... ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
249:How do you expect me to resist? You’re a walking temptation. A testosterone menace in a tiny little towel, ~ J S Scott, #NFDB
250:I have one reason why you should walk away from that temptation right now. One reason: God. Is. Better. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
251:I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
252:In every profession and walk of life there is someone who is vulnerablle to temptation. (Mr. Barnes) ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
253:I have found that people who can successfully resist temptation invariably lead depressingly stunted lives. ~ C D Payne, #NFDB
254:The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
255:training of the eye of the soul is even more necessary, because it can anticipate the advent of temptation. ~ F B Meyer, #NFDB
256:He had the strength to resist temptation or excitement, no matter how seductive, no matter the situation. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
257:Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
258:Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
259:The perennial temptation is to creep under the angel’s flaming sword, to try to create a heaven on earth. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
260:Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
261:(For what is curiosity if not intellectual temptation? And what progress is there without curiosity?) ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
262:I can resist anything except temptation." Ren, main character in Sherrilyn Kenyon's novel Time Untime. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
263:I couldn't resist the temptation to tease Pyle - it is, after all, the weapon of weakness and I was weak. ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
264:It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken ~ Walter Dean Myers, #NFDB
265:Learning to walk or live in the power of the Holy Spirit is the key to victory over sin and temptation. Paul ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
266:Temptation is attractive; otherwise it wouldn’t be tempting. And it’s dangerous because it’s attractive. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
267:For they who think they make an end of temptation by yeilding to it, only set themselves on fire the more. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
268:I'm fighting to save myself, and save myself, I will." Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
269:In stories, nothing good ever comes from failing to heed an overt warning, no matter how great the temptation. ~ Nina Lane, #NFDB
270:No temptation can gravitate to a man unless there is that is his heart which is capable of responding to it. ~ James Allen, #NFDB
271:Unwillingness to accept God's 'way of escape' from temptation frightens me - what a rebel yet resides within. ~ Jim Elliot, #NFDB
272:You really should discard your inhibitions,' he said. 'They could get in the way of yielding to temptation. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
273:All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
274:If you meet temptation, use self-control; if you meet pain, use fortitude; if you meet revulsion, use patience. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
275:Our temptation now and always is not to trust in God but to trust in our faith tradition of trusting in God. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
276:before victory comes temptation. And the greater the victory to win, the greater the temptation to withstand. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
277:He has resisted Temptation for Centuries, A stone cold warrior whose frozen heart refuses to thaw- Until Her.. ~ Lara Adrian, #NFDB
278:Hinduism would not have been much of a religion if Rama had not steeled his heart against every temptation. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
279:Jesus's first temptation was to be relevant: to turn stones into bread. Oh, how often I wished I could do that! ~ Mike Ditka, #NFDB
280:MAT26.41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
281:The attempt to close the gap between what is known and what IS, is the temptation behind the apple in Genesis. ~ Barry Lopez, #NFDB
282:Those were the words she wanted to hear and she finally surrendered to the temptation of believing them. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zaf n, #NFDB
283:Those were the words she wanted to hear and she finally surrendered to the temptation of believing them. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, #NFDB
284:You must put aside the passing moments of terror and temptation, and focus on what’s most important in the ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
285:41Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
286:By demanding that we seek his glory alone, God is calling us to overcome the natural temptation to seek our own. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
287:Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
288:Watch and d pray that you may not e enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
289:We are creatures of imitation. We find it hard to resist the temptation to do that which we see others doing. ~ Napoleon Hill, #NFDB
290:Character is not developed in moments of temptation and trial. That is when it is intended to be used. —Richard ~ Jeff Wheeler, #NFDB
291:History has shown that governments will inevitably succumb to the temptation of inflating the money supply. ~ Saifedean Ammous, #NFDB
292:Temptation is the feeling we get when encountered by an opportunity to do what we innately know we shouldn't. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
293:he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning “That path leads ever down into stagnation.” — ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
294:Sometimes, God on purpose allows Satan to tempt human.
One should keep on praying to be kept away of temptation. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
295:Virtue, which breaks through opposition and all temptation can remove, most shines, and most is acceptable above. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
296:38 Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
297:If you could see into my past just by touching my back, you’d have a hard time resisting the temptation too. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
298:I try to keep in shape and I always have to check myself. Whenever I binge eat, sweets are the one temptation. ~ Morris Chestnut, #NFDB
299:Most humans feel the transcendent temptation, the emotional drive to festoon the universe with large-scale meaning. ~ Paul Kurtz, #NFDB
300:God has created you because he loved you. He loved you so much that he could not resist the temptation to create you. When ~ Osho, #NFDB
301:I'd never say no to surgery in the future, because I feel like, as I get older, I'm going to face temptation more. ~ Marcia Cross, #NFDB
302:rationality is subject to the single worst temptation--to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
303:Scripture doesn't promise that God will remove temptation, only that you'll be given strength to withstand it. ~ Garrison Keillor, #NFDB
304:Temptation is temptation.” Lucy flipped another
page, her reading intent and steady. “No matter what the stakes. ~ Luke Taylor,#NFDB
305:We all have the temptation to be backseat drivers when it comes to decisions that don't work out the way we want. ~ Don Mattingly, #NFDB
306:Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
307:We never know the quality of someone else's life, though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgement. ~ Tami Hoag, #NFDB
308:Adharma is thus an eternal temptation, while dharma is an endless work in progress that validates our humanity. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
309:Between the demand to be clear,and the temptation to be obscure, impossible to decide which deserves more respect. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
310:rationality is subject to the single worst temptation--to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
311:There is such seduction in a library of good books that I cannot resist the temptation to luxuriate in reading. ~ John Quincy Adams, #NFDB
312:In pursuing a minimalist lifestyle, we need to resist the temptation to recreate the outside world within our abodes. ~ Francine Jay, #NFDB
313:In the incident of her husband’s death, her temptation to commit the alleged atrocities may have had its birth.”[ ~ Harold Schechter, #NFDB
314:Resist the temptation to compare yourself to others. This is crucial in order to be able to manifest whatever you want. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
315:You don't have to get in or out of a position all at once. Avoid the temptation of wanting to be completely right. ~ Jack D Schwager, #NFDB
316:1 GOD IS our Refuge and Strength [mighty and impenetrable to temptation], a very present and well-proved help in trouble. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
317:Her voice was an offering from God and a temptation from hell, a tone so potent it could corrupt a man, or save him. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
318:Power was my weakness and my temptation. And Miguel Sano is very tempting. But he is not weak. He is very, very strong. ~ J K Rowling, #NFDB
319:Temptation said that we all dream of committing crimes, but that only the unbalanced make that macabre idea a reality. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
320:Virtue is nothing without the trial of temptation, for there is no conflict without an enemy, no victory without strife. ~ Pope Leo I, #NFDB
321:We should have a strong president. Strong enough to resist the temptation of taking power that a president shouldn't have. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
322:Bait is made to look SO good you OVERlook the trap. Whether scratched or scarred you ALWAYS get hurt giving in to Temptation. ~ LeCrae, #NFDB
323:For as men in battle are continually in the way of shot, so we, in this world, are ever within the reach of Temptation. ~ William Penn, #NFDB
324:Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. And do not bring us into temptation. Luke 11:4 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
325:Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
326:No credit--no debt. Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil. ~ Solomon Northup, #NFDB
327:Temptation comes to everyone, the difference is between those who fight it, and those who make excuses to give in to it. ~ J T Cope IV, #NFDB
328:Before speaking, consult your inner-truth barometer, and resist the temptation to tell people only what they want to hear. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
329:I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
330:I never give in to the temptation to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. That would be too ridiculous. ~ Jacques Derrida, #NFDB
331:Obviously, there's the temptation to sit back and smile, .. But there's so much at stake, we have to do our due diligence. ~ Ralph Neas, #NFDB
332:[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, #NFDB
333:The kiss is sweeter than sin and fiercer than temptation. I am not gentle, I am not kind; I am rough and wild and savage. ~ S Jae Jones, #NFDB
334:The temptation to cocoon in a microhotel pod on the slab, to eat hot noodles from a cup and watch videos, was strong. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
335:And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
336:The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
337:Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph? ~ Robert Browning, #NFDB
338:Before speaking, consult your inner-truth barometer, and resist the temptation to tell people only what they want to hear. ~ Wayne W Dyer, #NFDB
339:I twitched a smile, resisting the temptation to kick his teeth down his throat, and folded myself into the deck chair. ~ Richard K Morgan, #NFDB
340:So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
341:Temptations in the life of faith are not accidents; each temptation is part of a plan, a step in the progress of faith. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
342:Has there not been, sometimes, this temptation to do a great deal for Christ, but not to live a great deal with Christ? ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
343:If you decide that you cannot beat a temptation, what you are really doing is giving yourself permission to be irresponsible. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
344:It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
345:resisting the temptation to build complexity when (as in the case of financial regulation) simplicity is a better option. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
346:Sir, a reformed man is worth ten men virtuous from birth, for he understands temptation and will strive the harder to not stray. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
347:I flipped through the rest of the pages—when you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation. ~ Elizabeth Kostova, #NFDB
348:Maybe I have thought intellect more important than faith. And now it seems this final temptation has been put in front of me. ~ Zadie Smith, #NFDB
349:PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
350:The experiments show quite clearly that, as you resist more and more temptation, you're actually more and more likely to fail. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
351:Zoe’s face tilted up toward his presented a temptation he could no more resist than he could prevent the sun from rising. ~ Barbara Longley, #NFDB
352:A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow. ~ Boris Pasternak, #NFDB
353:Till our hearts be throughly broken for covenant-breach, we will not pass much for breaking covenant, upon every fresh temptation. ~ Various, #NFDB
354:Avoiding the temptation to sin and being patient upon that, is greater than being patient whilst being afflicted with trials. ~ Ibn Taymiyyah, #NFDB
355:Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
356:Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
357:The temptation to add features to a program must be resisted as strongly as possible. This requires the dedication of a saint ~ Joe Armstrong, #NFDB
358:No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
359:Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
360:One thing I’ve learned is it’s better sometimes, in the weeds, to resist the temptation to stand up and follow the compass. * ~ John Darnielle, #NFDB
361:The temptation to take the next step hung in the air around them...it was the apple: take one bite, and there was no going back. ~ Carol Oates, #NFDB
362:Well done.'
Digory's hunger and temptation didn't cause him to stray, and it was worth it just for that "well done" from Aslan. ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
363:Maintaining the relationship. But there's also physical temptation and being on the same spiritual level, which can be difficult. ~ Kevin Jonas, #NFDB
364:There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing. ~ David McCullough, #NFDB
365:And here indeed it was again, the temptation, the cowardly, the future-corruptive serpent: trample on it stupid fool. Be Mexico. ~ Malcolm Lowry, #NFDB
366:An idle person is the devil's tennis ball, which he bandies up and down with temptation until at last the ball goes out of play. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
367:If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
368:...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
369:When you find yourself in a idiotic situation though, the temptation to test how far the idiocy will stretch can be overwhelming. ~ David Thorne, #NFDB
370:It is a blessed thing to know that no power on earth, no temptation, no human frailty can dissolve what God holds together. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
371:She was the sweetest ambrosia sent straight from heaven. Or the most sinful temptation to drag him down to hell. He didn’t care. ~ Juliette Cross, #NFDB
372:To succumb to the God Temptation in either of those guises, biological or cosmological, is an act of intellectual capitulation. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
373:I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
374:Learning takes us through many states of life, but it fails utterly in the hour of danger and temptation. Then faith alone saves. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
375:To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
376:...wherever there is society, there is authority and the temptation to disobedience because our individual wills refuse to submit... ~ John Geddes, #NFDB
377:beauty has been known to drive men wild, like the sirens did. Man’s challenge is to steer clear from it.” - Salvadore about temptation ~ Kailin Gow, #NFDB
378:Throughout his life Wilberforce resisted the cheap temptation to point the finger at others while posturing as their moral superior. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
379:I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder if this is temptation. If so, I am stone. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
380:If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
381:in the end they grew tired of making all these efforts to stay young and active, and gave in to the temptation of simply resting. I ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
382:It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with. ~ James Anthony Froude, #NFDB
383:There is nothing new about humanism. It is the yielding to Satan's first temptation of Adam and Eve: "Ye shall be as gods." (Gen. 3:5) ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
384:The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist. ~ William James, #NFDB
385:You never know what you're made of until temptation comes knocking. The only temptation I've given in to is to have one more slice. ~ Donna Lynn Hope, #NFDB
386:religions attempt to influence our mind-sets in the moment of temptation by incorporating different moral reminders into our environment. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
387:She leaned forward, and her boobs nearly fell out of that tight sweater. He could feel his eyes bulge and his hands itch with temptation. ~ Robyn Carr, #NFDB
388:This is the great work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God, and toexpect temptation to his last breath. ~ Anthony the Great, #NFDB
389: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, #NFDB
390:Never assume, no matter how strong the temptation, that other people are low-life lying manipulators without a shred of human decency. ~ Dinesh D Souza, #NFDB
391:He was trying to rape me."
Again that long, assessing, intimate look. "I can sympathize with the temptation," he said, half to himself. ~ Anne Stuart,#NFDB
392: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, #NFDB
393:He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
394:Judges need to restrict themselves to the proper resolution of the case before them. They need to avoid the temptation to set broad policy. ~ Mike DeWine, #NFDB
395:Just remember when temptation comes your way that a boy will drink beyond his means and a man will know when he’s had enough.” “Yes, ~ Elizabeth Chadwick, #NFDB
396:No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
397:Safety is an illusion, as is faith without temptation. We’re imperfect, unlike the gods, but in that imperfection we may yet make them jealous. ~ Ken Liu, #NFDB
398:When temptation comes your way, name that boastful, deceitful giant “Goliath!” and do with it as David did to the Philistine of Gath. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
399:Woman is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill. ~ Saint John Chrysostom, #NFDB
400:Despite the weight of the world on my shoulders, the temptation to stop and smell the supernatural roses tugged on my sleeves a time or two. ~ John Corwin, #NFDB
401:Even knowing it wasn’t real, knowing that she was looking through an eight by twoinch fib, the temptation was overwhelming to believe. ~ Hugh Howey, #NFDB
402:If you are going to be underestimated by people who speak more rapidly, the temptation is to speak slowly and strategically and outwit them. ~ Doris Betts, #NFDB
403:Only the desert has a fascination--to ride alone--in the sun in the forever unpossessed country--away from man. That is a great temptation. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
404:There is a temptation in politics to look for simplistic slogans and to play the game in a way that looks like you're a savvy politician. ~ Kathleen Wynne, #NFDB
405:All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
406:And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
407:I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths. ~ Bram Stoker, #NFDB
408:It takes discipline to focus only on high-value targets instead of giving in to the temptation of the low-hanging fruit life serves up daily. ~ Mark Divine, #NFDB
409:Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
410:The doubter’s doubt is faith; his temptation is belief, and it is a temptation that has not been entirely quelled, even in a secular age. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
411:But bad habits aren’t so easily banished. They bide their time and wait for frustration, doubt, and then temptation to do their bidding. ~ Mary Ellen Taylor, #NFDB
412:Hmm. I’m tempted. But what works against my temptation is the ancient junior high code of Omerta. Nobody squeals on nobody, no matter what. ~ Joseph Bruchac, #NFDB
413:I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them. ~ L M Montgomery, #NFDB
414:Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
415:The wind cannot overturn a mountain. Temptation cannot touch the man Who is awake, strong and humble, Who masters hiself and minds the law. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
416:It was quite impossible, he found, to ask to be delivered from temptation when your heart’s desire was to be tempted unto seventy times seven. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
417:Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession. ~ Georg Simmel, #NFDB
418:The difference between a good and a poor architect is that the poor architect succumbs to every temptation and the good one resists it. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
419:We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
420:I have switched on this modern laptop machine. And I have told myself that I must resist the temptation to start playing solitaire upon it. ~ Margaret Drabble, #NFDB
421:Temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction ~ John Owen, #NFDB
422:We should resist the temptation to identify our religious convictions with the platform of a party or the platitudes of favored politicians. ~ Ralph E Reed Jr, #NFDB
423:False ideas are the greatest obstacle to the reception of the gospel.”13 Not pop culture. Not consumerism. Not moral temptation. False ideas. ~ Nancy R Pearcey, #NFDB
424:I didn't want to think about a project that I couldn't finish. That's a kind of temptation. One has to realize one's limitations. Why kid yourself? ~ I M Pei, #NFDB
425:keep the heart full of a sense of the love of God in Christ. This is the greatest preservative against the power of temptation in the world. Joseph ~ John Owen, #NFDB
426:Money, big money (which is actually a relative concept) is always, under any circumstances, a seduction, a test of morals, a temptation to sin. ~ Boris Yeltsin, #NFDB
427:Temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
428:As soon as you willfully allow a dialogue with temptation to begin, the soul is robbed of peace, just as consent to impurity destroys grace. ~ Josemaria Escriva, #NFDB
429:Resisting temptation and instilling self-control are general human goals, and repeatedly failing to achieve them is a source of much of our misery. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
430:A standing army is like a standing member. It's an excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure. ~ Elbridge Gerry, #NFDB
431:He who is not delicate flower of your soul to the winds of temptation, whatever it whole and saved and passed on to the end, it's as if it never had. ~ Ivo Andri, #NFDB
432:James 1:13 specifically says that God tempts no one. God may test, but He never tempts to evil. A test is for growth; temptation is toward evil. Not ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
433:Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody. ~ Calvin Coolidge, #NFDB
434:The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
435:The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego. ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
436:Wise people put as much distance between themselves and sexual temptation as possible. They not only get away but also plan their escape route. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
437:Creative minds are highly susceptible to distraction, and our newfound connectivity poses a powerful temptation for all of us to drift off focus. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
438:I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, #NFDB
439:It is not enough to simply remove temptation. We must beat it away, burn it, suppress it, combat it with as much ruthless intent as we can muster. ~ Karen Hawkins, #NFDB
440:Moralists and philosophers have adjudged those who throw temptation in the way of the erring, equally guilty with those who are thereby led into evil ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
441:Retarget your money. When your money comes in, you need to have already targeted where you are going to invest or doodad temptation will set in. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
442:So temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
443:The guy was a piece of sin. If he were the devil holding a contract, this would be the moment I might just give in to temptation and sign over my soul. ~ J C Reed, #NFDB
444:The temptation to tell a Chief in a great position the things he most likes to hear is one of the commonest explanations of mistaken policy. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
445:...years of resolute self-denial, instead of rewarding him with reserves of fortitude, had left him more than ordinarily susceptible to temptation. ~ John Cheever, #NFDB
446:After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting. ~ Jean Cocteau, #NFDB
447:Freedom has real meaning when, for example, a situation of temptation arises and one remains God-fearing, steadfast, and in control of one’s actions. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
448:Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot. ~ Benjamin Franklin, #NFDB
449:Watch and d pray that you may not e enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39And again he went away and prayed, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
450:9But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
451:Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age. ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
452:There had to be forces outside. The prayer went, "Lead me not in temptation." If people were not led by others, why was the famous prayer that it was? ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
453:What constitutes virtue, Mrs Graham? Is it the circumstance of being able and willing to resist temptation; or that of having no temptations to resist? ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
454:You are my test, Riley. My temptation. My mother says you’re the light, and I want to stand in it with you, but…”
“So stand with me,” I interrupt. ~ Ginger Scott,#NFDB
455:13No temptation[27] has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[28] beyond what you can bear. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
456:Everything about this place was evil. This type of temptation was the folly of men who thought they could buy sin without consequences. He hated it. ~ Sheila English, #NFDB
457:For every great temptation there will be many small ones. Wolves and bears are more dangerous than flies, but we are bothered most by flies. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
458:If we resist the temptation to allow other people to define who we are, then we will gradually be able to let the sun inside our own soul shine forth. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
459:we often aren’t mindful in our deduction, and the temptation to gloss over and jump to the end becomes ever stronger the closer we get to the finish line ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
460:A good portrait is incredibly hard to create, there is too much temptation to pander to the individual rather than portray them as they really were ~ Philippe Halsman, #NFDB
461:I think it's important never to look yourself up on Wikipedia. I think the temptation to correct any interesting factual errors would be too much. ~ Marcus Brigstocke, #NFDB
462:Since self-control is a muscle that tires easily, it is much better to avoid temptation in the first place rather than try to resist it once it arises. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
463:You know some religious scholars believe that when faced with overwhelming temptation you should commit a small sin just to relieve the pressure a bit. ~ Bree Despain, #NFDB
464:A man may quarrel with himself alone; that is, by controverting his better instincts and knowledge when brought face to face with temptation. ~ William Ellery Channing, #NFDB
465:I should have shouted "No" and left him. "But at least" said Satan in the deeps of my mind, "know what the temptation is before you do anything hastily. ~ Lord Dunsany, #NFDB
466:Remember sometimes just the rush of having a crush is a temptation, even if it is inappropriate, but beware of playing with fire, you will get burned. ~ Joseph J Ellis, #NFDB
467:I never claimed to be an angel and even the devil could only play with fire for so long before he gave in to unholy temptation and danced in the flames. ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
468:I understand the temptation to sell short, but I also know that impulse is driven by your mind’s desire for comfort, and it’s not telling you the truth. ~ David Goggins, #NFDB
469:Nope. Resist the temptation, Letty. Fuck him like a Roman nympho whore with a flaming crotch, let him put it out with a cum spritzer, then run like hell. ~ Kendall Grey, #NFDB
470:My, my, my…” She sighed, affecting a Southern drawl she no doubt stole from Wesley. “I see temptation has come a knockin’ and you have answered the door… ~ Tiffany Reisz, #NFDB
471: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. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
472:You have to encourage people not to give in to the temptation to be normal, even if it isn't easy - because when you're young, you really want to belong. ~ Clemence Poesy, #NFDB
473:Discipline is the ability to consistently choose perpetual benefit over fleeting temptation . Mike Alexander, Fitness Expert CHAPTER 1 Introduction to Scrum 33 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
474:The way he looked me up and down made a part of me burn with desire. Fire and electricity. Flames and sparks. Needing and wanting. Tempting temptation. ~ Angela Richardson, #NFDB
475:You and I must live temptation-aware; to fail to do so is to fail to recognize the fallenness of the world that happens to be the address where we live. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
476:At GQ, there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan, #NFDB
477:Every colonial nation carries carries the seeds of a fascist temptation in its bossom. What is fascism if not a regime of oppression for the benefit of a few ~ Albert Memmi, #NFDB
478:Mixing with groups of people can be enjoyed, it is pleasing in a way that cannot be explained other than the temptation to become closer to one or the other. ~ Raymond Burr, #NFDB
479:When you are not conscious of temptation, pray “lead us not into temptation”; and when you are conscious of it, pray “deliver us from evil”; and you will live. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
480:As lovers of truth, we want to be close to it. Sometimes - evil thought, evil temptation - we want to be close to it by misleading others about its presence. ~ Thomas L Dumm, #NFDB
481:†Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive †the crown of life †which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
482:Gently resist the temptation to chase your dreams into the world; pursue them in your heart until they disappear into the Self, and leave them there. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, #NFDB
483:In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History? ~ Charles de Gaulle, #NFDB
484:My temptation is emotional, and resisting will further my needed weight loss and strengthen my character. Furthermore, nothing tastes as good as thin feels. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
485:The greatest mistake is to think you are too strong to fall into temptation. Put your finger in the fire and it will burn. So we have to go through the fire. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
486:A temptation arises: it is the wind. It disturbs you: it is the surging of the seas. This is the time to awaken Christ and let Him remind you of these words ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
487:In that moment, he looked like mischief and midnight,
like a temptation that always slipped away too fast and left you at once relieved and disappointed. ~ Roshani Chokshi,#NFDB
488:So also in the terrors of sin and death, I do not exchange death with life, and Christ with the devil, although in the midst of temptation it seems like this. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
489:When one's function is to teach the loftiest wisdom, it is difficult to resist the temptation to believe that until you have spoken, nothing has been said. ~ Jacques Maritain, #NFDB
490:12†Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive †the crown of life †which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
491:I skipped out of the Fox lot, threw my Keds back on, resisted the temptation to go over to the Simpsons building and take selfies with the Bart Simpson topiary, ~ Mindy Kaling, #NFDB
492:When you are tempted to forsake God because of the greatness of evil and misery in the world, may you remember that the BIble has prepared us for this temptation. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
493:If an unexpected temptation comes, don't blame the one through whom it came, but seek out the reason. Thus you will find correction for your soul. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor, #NFDB
494:No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it. ~ John Ruskin, #NFDB
495:A man must claim responsibility for his own temptation, and not pin it on the woman who arouses him. It’s a gown, Sir Mark. Not even one of my more daring ones. ~ Courtney Milan, #NFDB
496:Even in cases where most people are doing the right thing, talking about the minority who are doing the wrong thing can encourage people to give in to temptation. ~ Jonah Berger, #NFDB
497:Why should I want to have a lot of copies of this and that lying around? Nothing but clutter in the office, a temptation to prying eyes, and a waste of good paper. ~ John Brooks, #NFDB
498:I hope never to see that boy again.
He had trouble written all over that impish smile of his.
I don't need this kind of temptation in my life." - Thia Clay ~ Alice Rachel,#NFDB
499:That’s too much power for one man to wield, too much temptation. The easier we make it to kill, the less time there is to master the art of knowing when not to. ~ Lindsay Buroker, #NFDB
500:To lessen or destroy sexual pleasure is to lessen temptation; a fallback in case the religious injunctions on veiling and seclusion somehow fail to do the job. ~ Geraldine Brooks, #NFDB
501:1 Timothy 6:9—“Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. ~ J Ryan Stradal, #NFDB
502:As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
503:Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
504:One can defend common sense against the attacks of philosophers only by solving their puzzles, i.e., by curing them of the temptation to attack common sense. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein, #NFDB
505:Resisting means we make a stand against temptation. We choose the pathway of Jesus. With the power of God in our lives, we deliberately decide to draw close to him. ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
506:We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? ~ Seneca the Elder, #NFDB
507:Temptation is the price that the human race pays for intelligence, therefore the Serpent of Wisdom is also the eternal Tempter. ~ Manly P Hall, Magic: A Treatise on Esoteric Ethics, #NFDB
508:He would be the object lesson, the walking warning to the cadets. What happened when you gave in to temptation. When you listened to the fallen angels of your nature. ~ Louise Penny, #NFDB
509:Temptation gains power where we see it prevail in others we know and we express neither shock or hatred of them and their ways nor pity and prayer for their deliverance. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
510:The Red Sox are a religion. Every year we re-enact the agony and the temptation in the Garden. Baseball child's play? Hell, up here in Boston it's a passion play. ~ George V Higgins, #NFDB
511:Thomas make it easy to cave to temptation with his golden - blond hair, muscle from head to toe and sexy brooding expression a few girls have written about in poems. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
512:What happens when you win?
When your enemies are at your mercy: how will you act then? Compromise is the temptation of the weak; this is the test for the strong. ~ Salman Rushdie,#NFDB
513:Compromise built upon compromise equals failure. Instead, resisting temptation allowed promise upon promise to be built up in my heart, and that creates empowerment. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
514:Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the instruments of love. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
515:Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim - not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
516:Temptation only works if the possible futures open to you are concealed. Consequences, including those of Judgment Day, must be hidden from view or outright denied. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
517: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 sand-paper. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin, #NFDB
518:If I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us. ~ Gunter Grass, #NFDB
519:Not that Beulah didn't present her own set of problems. She did. Not least of which was fighting the temptation to fake some scribbles on her and let the ghost have fun. ~ Stacia Kane, #NFDB
520:The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings. ~ Paul Ormerod, #NFDB
521: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. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
522:Neuroscientists know now that bad habits have a physical existence in the structure of the brain; they become the default circuits when we are faced with temptation. ~ Richard O Connor, #NFDB
523:Satan’s efforts to defeat God’s purposes for humankind. This is the basic idea behind all temptation: God is presented as depriving us by his commands of what is good. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
524:Take my children for example… Really, take them before I turn them into homicidal maniacs. I think it’d be surprisingly easy, and that’s a temptation no woman should have. ~ Celia Kyle, #NFDB
525:Elbridge Gerry had bawdily likened standing armies to a tumescent penis: “An excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
526:Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. ~ W B Yeats, #NFDB
527:If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted. ~ Larry McMurtry, #NFDB
528: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, #NFDB
529:We may feel that a particular habit 'isn't too bad,'but continually giving in to that habit weakens our wills against the onslaughts of temptation from other directions. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
530:Most people indulged in their vices and clung to their virtues based on their responses to temptation and conflict, not because some Other within them drove their behavior. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
531:The dangerous temptation of wildlife films is that they can lull us into thinking we can get by without the original models -- that we might not need animals in the flesh. ~ Doug Peacock, #NFDB
532:As ministers our greatest temptation is toward too many words. They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
533:Back in the day, before the worldwide web of temptation, there used to be that thing called inspiration. Then the spirit was perpetually displaced by trivia and vanity search. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
534:Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
535:Temptation and testing (or a trial) are two sides of the same coin. Satan uses an occasion or a person to tempt us to fall; God uses the same to try us and make us stronger. ~ Ruth Graham, #NFDB
536:...without knowing why, he yielded to the temptation of those lips and flung onto them, eating them, partaking of their sacrament... Eucharist of love with a red host! ~ Georges Rodenbach, #NFDB
537:...if I were asked to think up a new name for temptation, I should recommend the word 'doorknob', because what are these protuberances put on doors for if not to tempt us... ~ G nter Grass, #NFDB
538:It only too often yields to the temptation to become sycophantic, opportunist and lying, like a politician who sees the truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
539:As ministers our greatest temptation is toward too many words. They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
540:Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves ~ Anne Baxter, #NFDB
541:People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives. ~ Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn, #NFDB
542:Satan will tempt you with many things in life, but the most powerful is the temptation to be grateful for what you have, when it is not the best life God had to offer you. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
543:For any filmmaker who has just released a film and who is experiencing some measure of success, the temptation can be great to respond to every screening request that comes in. ~ Julia Bacha, #NFDB
544:He should always wear jeans because they make him look hotter than a nebula. Black suits him too. It hugs to his muscular vales and swells, turning temptation into sexy man therapy. ~ Poppet, #NFDB
545:cannot avoid the temptation of wondering whether there is any other industry in this country which seeks to presume so completely to give the customer what he does not want. ~ Jeannette Walls, #NFDB
546:Foulgrin: "If you can keep Fletcher from saying a definitive no to a temptation, you've won. Whatever is not a no is merely a postponed yes." (advice to the tempter Squaltaint) ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
547:I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin. ~ Edmond de Goncourt, #NFDB
548:...he was trapped in the electrochemical web of cognition, wherein curiosity leads into temptation, temptation leads into fear, and fear is considered an impulse to be mastered. ~ Laird Barron, #NFDB
549:It’s all about sticking to your plan and experiencing feelings as they arise. If you are unwilling to feel your feelings, the temptation is to avoid them by jumping off your system ~ Ed Seykota, #NFDB
550:Temptation is a slower process and you’ll feel it more in the morning just after waking and in the evening, when you are at loose ends, tired, and yet not ready to fall asleep. ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
551:There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
552:True Christians are assured that no temptation (or trial) shall happen to them but what they shall be enabled to bear; and that the grace of Christ shall be sufficient for them. ~ Roger Sherman, #NFDB
553:As the pilot of a vessel is tried in the storm; as the wrestler is tried in the ring, the soldier in the battle, and the hero in adversity: so is the Christian tried in temptation. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
554:I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
555:If God has called you, the more they block your way, the more that trouble and temptation, the more God's love is provoked. Each attempt to stop you asks for more evidence from God. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
556:Do today's duty, fight to-day's temptation; and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them. ~ Charles Kingsley, #NFDB
557:The 1789 Revolution had given the French a political script of unequalled drama. For the better part of the following century the temptation to reenact the play was irresistible. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
558:The temptation
To take the precious things we have apart
To see how they work
Must be resisted for they never fit together again.
- Must I Paint You a Picture ~ Billy Bragg,#NFDB
559:We're all struggling to stay upright, Maura thought. Resisting the pull of temptation,just as we fight the pull of gravity. And when we finally fall, it's always such a surprise. ~ Tess Gerritsen, #NFDB
560:When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser. ~ Marianne Moore, #NFDB
561:Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
562:Not every difficult experience in life is necessarily a personal test from God. (Of course, any experience could become a test or a temptation, depending on how we deal with it. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
563:Sometimes the hardest thing to do in a pressure situation is to allow the tension to persist. The temptation is to make a decision, any decision, even if it is an inferior choice. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
564:To cultivate love, or whole-soul-fulness, we must resist the temptation to be upwardly mobile, to be always on the move, to pull up our roots and fly to the mythic kingdom of Elsewhere. ~ Sam Keen, #NFDB
565:Undoubtedly, one of the reasons God allows us to fall before temptation so often is to teach us experientially that we really are dependent on Him to enable us to grow in holiness. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
566:We do want progress in our knowledge and growth in our understanding, but we have to be careful not to be lured into the temptation to come up with something new just to be novel. THE ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
567:We’re all struggling to stay upright, Maura thought. Resisting the pull of temptation, just as we fight the pull of gravity. And when we finally fall, it’s always such a surprise. ~ Tess Gerritsen, #NFDB
568:Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. ~ William Butler Yeats, #NFDB
569:Father, be with me. Give me strength. Let me never fall into temptation again. Please, Father of all, lead me. Give me strength. I pray for this and all things in Jesus’s name. Amen. ~ Lisa Jackson, #NFDB
570:If death itself were to die, would it have a ghost, and would the ghost of death visit the dead in the guise of someone alive, if only to fright them from any temptation to return? ~ William H Gass, #NFDB
571:If Jesus viewed the desire to acquire political power to be a temptation of the devil, why do so many American Christians fight to acquire as much of this political power as they can? ~ Keith Giles, #NFDB
572:I won't stick around to see how much temptation I can take. God is not impressed with my ability to stand up to sin. He is more impressed by the obedience I show when I run from it. ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
573:No one is so good that he is immune from temptation. We will never be entirely free from it. . . . There is no order so holy, no place so secret where there will be no temptation. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
574:Resist the temptation to ascribe motive, because you really don't know - and it gets in the way of being able to reach a consensus on things that matter to you and to many other people. ~ Joe Biden, #NFDB
575:So much depends, therefore, upon our maintaining gospel perspective in the midst of ordinariness, the pressures of temptation, tribulation, deprivation, and the cares of the world. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
576:The temptation was great to muster what force we could and put up a fight. It's the easiest way out, and the most satisfactory to self-respect--but, nearly invariably, the stupidest. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
577:Unlikable women refuse to give in to that temptation. They are, instead, themselves. They accept the consequences of their choices, and those consequences become stories worth reading. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
578:But precisely this illusion that everything is "clear" is what is blinding us all. It is a serious temptation, and it is a subtle form of pride and worldly love of power and revenge. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
579:There was always the temptation to imagine tourists had no life other than the one you saw them leading; that they were constantly wowing at landmarks and wearing inappropriate shirts. ~ Mick Herron, #NFDB
580:The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing...is a vice so mean and low, without any temptation, that every man of sense and character detests and despises it. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
581:There was still the temptation to believe the world was a mere trap for human sin. But sin, the way he saw it, was only the failure of an imperfectly made being to keep a perfect law. ~ Matthew Pearl, #NFDB
582:Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
583:We’re all struggling to stay upright, Maura thought. Resisting the pull of temptation, just as we fight the pull of gravity. And when we finally fall, it’s always such a surprise. The ~ Tess Gerritsen, #NFDB
584:A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. ~ Ring Lardner, #NFDB
585:If death itself were to die, would it have a ghost, and would the ghost of death visit the dead in the guise of someone alive, if only to fright them from any temptation to return?
~ William H Gass,#NFDB
586:I hate being moved. I hate that man who came in. So self-righteous, so cruel. He made fun of me, that's why I cried. You never did that. You led me into temptation by your - politeness. ~ Peter Ustinov, #NFDB
587:I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself. ~ Yukio Mishima, #NFDB
588:I think when you're trying to produce a relationship on screen that doesn't actually exist, perhaps sometimes there's a temptation to look at each other more, to touch each other more... ~ Paul Bettany, #NFDB
589:blueprint as a metaphor for a design or plan is much overworked. If the temptation to use it is irresistible, at least remember that a blueprint is a completed plan, not a preliminary one. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
590:By a dialectic well known to those who habitually succumb to temptation he passed in a second from the time when it was too early to struggle to the time when it was too late to struggle. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
591:James fought the temptation to repeat “traditional chromosomal energy signature,” just because it was such an awesome example of erudition gone weird, and thought hard to answer her question. ~ Amy Lane, #NFDB
592:nodded, resisting a temptation to take over and direct the search himself for the missing truck and driver. Action would be a therapy. The cold of several days, and dampness with it, had ~ Arthur Hailey, #NFDB
593:There will always be a temptation to tell a neat story that makes everything sensible and logical and that suggests why the deserving succeeded while the wicked or arrogant failed. ~ Philip M Rosenzweig, #NFDB
594:When you are faced with deficiencies instead of strengths and inclinations, this is the strategy you must assume: ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
595:I wonder if the greatest temptation is self-rejection. Could it be that beneath all the lures to greed, lust, and success rests a great fear of never being enough or not being lovable? ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
596:Politics is the church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the prince of this world.” – JACQUES ELLUL ~ Keith Giles, #NFDB
597:Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you
never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you
ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting
moment. ~ Sarah MacLean,#NFDB
598:They also held that the way to salvation was to give way to lust and temptation in all things. And no greater percentage of them turned up here than of any other religion. Amusing, isn't it? ~ Neil Gaiman, #NFDB
599:Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head, but don't be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud, one is safe from the worst form of pride. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
600:I don’t know if you realize exactly how beautiful you are. Your heart, mind, and soul are every bit as beautiful as your gorgeous exterior, and I’ve spent years trying to resist temptation. ~ Siobhan Davis, #NFDB
601:The direction in which you head is determined by your own conscious decision to go there, and no one can take that away from you. -Bryce Clark in Fulfillment (Book 3 in The Temptation Series) ~ K M Golland, #NFDB
602:There's a great temptation to clean everything up and make everything more perfect. You have to know when to stop and stop doing it, or you might end up with something that sounds metronomic. ~ David Byrne, #NFDB
603:Mind has a temptation to divide. Once you divide, mind is at ease. If you don’t divide, if you say, “I’m not going to to say anything. I’m not going to judge,” mind feels as if it is on its deathbed. ~ Osho, #NFDB
604:The temptation with a man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified, and to invent, as the term is, a more intellectual doctrine. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
605:There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
606:Confess your sin to God openly and sincerely. Ask for forgiveness and the strength to overcome the temptation should it arise again. And lastly, remove yourself from the temptation altogether. ~ Sierra Simone, #NFDB
607:When we are overtaken with a sin, we sometimes fail to analyze how we fell. This is to our great disadvantage. We repent of the sin, but we do not consider the temptation that was the cause of it. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
608:About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
609:A great danger, or at least a great temptation, for many writers is to become too autobiographical in their approach to their fiction. A little autobiography and a lot of imagination are best. ~ Raymond Carver, #NFDB
610:If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors. ~ Hans Kung, #NFDB
611:The opposite of love? Vice. Temptation. The negative influences that we have. The bad energy that comes around us and makes us do certain things. To me, it's always been a war between the two. ~ Kendrick Lamar, #NFDB
612:They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. ~ Paul the Apostle, #NFDB
613:A man cannot destroy the savage in him by denying its impulses. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. –Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ~ Penelope Douglas, #NFDB
614:I don't take drugs nor drink since 2000 and I must say that I don't think about it anymore, although like every person that was addicted and has money - I know that this can lead to temptation. ~ Anthony Kiedis, #NFDB
615:Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready-made and all from the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the life of your betters. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
616:I was tempted, I was restless. I figured Kat would never find out, no harm would come of it. Don’t ever cheat on your wife, Tucker, no matter what the temptation. I mean, if you ever get married. ~ Patricia Ryan, #NFDB
617:The most powerful and courageous heroes I know are those who bite their tongues when justification, validation, temptation, or vengeance would have them strike with truthful, hurtful words. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
618:The pull to temptation, whether to pornography or to some other act of self-destruction, can feel so bewildering precisely because it is, quite literally, bedeviling. This is spiritual warfare. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
619:When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge. ~ Gerald Jampolsky, #NFDB
620:Hope is a fire more ravenous than the flames of temptation. For if only a portion of it poisons your veins, it is enough to make you stand against ridiculous odds again and again and again. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
621:And it’s a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists such as the ancients and ourselves, to try to murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self. But that is a mistake. ~ Donna Tartt, #NFDB
622:I never took amphetamines again—despite sometimes-intense longings for them (the brain of an addict or an alcoholic is changed for life; the possibility, the temptation, of regression never go away). ~ Oliver Sacks, #NFDB
623:It was a decision to work clean. I just prefer to work that way. I have no problem with comedians who don't work that way. There was a temptation in the early '70s to reconsider. I decided against it. ~ Bob Newhart, #NFDB
624:The Christian must abstain from sin. It is as simple and direct as that. You have no right to say, 'I am weak, I cannot, and temptation is very powerful.' The answer of the New Testament is, Stop doing it! ~ Martyn, #NFDB
625:Where unclarity resides, there is temptation, and there it proves only too easily the stronger. Wherever there is ambiguity, wherever there is wavering, there is disobedience down at the bottom. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
626:Wish there was something that I could say or do, I can resist anything but the temptation from you. But I'd rather walk alone than chase you around, I'd rather fall myself then let you drag me on down. ~ Ben Harper, #NFDB
627:Quite simply, no matter how hard you try, no matter how "open" you are, you'll end up surrounded by "yes people." It's hard not to believe people who are repeating your own ideas. Resist the temptation. ~ Tom Peters, #NFDB
628:The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (...) these three skills —self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most— are the foundation for self-control. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
629:There is a burden of care in getting riches; fear in keeping them; temptation in using them; guilt in abusing them; sorrow in losing them; and a burden of account at last to be given concerning them. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
630:I’m going to need you to stop talking about that, because I’m hard as stone, and you have no idea the temptation I’m battling.” “My evil vagina is impressed with her powers of temptation,” I deadpan. ~ Kristy Cunning, #NFDB
631:Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there. ~ Alice Walker, #NFDB
632:I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climb by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching & does not mean poor training, but only a strong-headedness. ~ William Shockley, #NFDB
633:If only gossip weren't so titillating. Sweeney tried to control an avid desire to know more, to dig for all the dirty details.
The temptation was great. Dirt was like fat; it made life more delicious. ~ Linda Howard,#NFDB
634:We must return from the desert like Jesus or St. John, with our capacity for feeling expanded and deepened, strengthened against the appeals of falsity, warned against temptation, great, noble and pure. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
635:A practical profession is a salvation for a man of my type; an academic career compels a young man to scientific production and only strong characters can resist the temptation of superficial analysis. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
636:At the Constitutional Convention, Elbridge Gerry had bawdily likened standing armies to a tumescent penis: “An excellent assurance of domestic tranquillity, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
637:It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
638:The sheer animal force of temptation ought to remind us of something: the universe is demon haunted. It also ought to remind us there’s only one among us who has ever wrestled the demons and prevailed. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
639:For men who have lived for a lifetime on a diet of contempt and disdain, the temptation to gain instant respect in this way can be worth far more than the cost of going to prison or even of dying.’ And after ~ Jon Ronson, #NFDB
640:Life is too short and hard and strange not to blame God for what He done made of the world. ~ Jay Lake, The Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen in Martin H. Greenberg (ed.) Westward Weird ISBN 978-0-7564-0718-6 p. 199, #NFDB
641:MAX STARED AT her phone. The temptation to turn it on was burning a hole in her hand. “Ugh!” She shoved it into the glove compartment of the rental car so that she wouldn’t be tempted to make any foolish ~ Melissa Foster, #NFDB
642:Ten thousand million nightmares, temptation by the score, I used to get so high, and still I wanted more. You think my time is wasted in search of who I am, I tried so hard to kill the boy inside the man. ~ Ozzy Osbourne, #NFDB
643:The shadowy, formless thing—the temptation of Hate, that hovered between him and the world—grew fainter and less sinister. It did not wholly fade away, but diffused itself and lingered thick at the edges. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
644:302. The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine And Human, Karma,#NFDB
645:Every enticing item you pass in the window and don’t buy is a crushed impulse, slowly whittling away at your reserve of willpower—making it much more likely that later in the day you will fall for temptation. ~ Dan Ariely, #NFDB
646:The most temptation I'd experienced had been with Tomas, the Senate's spy who had been feeding off me without permission, and Mircea, who was probably plotting some nefarious scheme. I have no taste in men. ~ Karen Chance, #NFDB
647:Develop discipline of self so that...you do not have to decide and re-decide what you will do when you are confronted with the same temptation time and time again. You need only decide some things once. ~ Spencer W Kimball, #NFDB
648:Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief. The lords prayer is less than 50 words long, and 6 of those words are devoted to asking god not to lead us into temptation. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
649:Indifference to our neighbour and to God also represents a real temptation for us Christians. Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry out and trouble our conscience. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
650:You are out of the way of temptation and out of the way of the tempter - I didn't mean to make you wicked - but I was - and am - and shall be - and I was with you so much that I couldn't help contaminate. ~ Emily Dickinson, #NFDB
651:Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you're thirsty -- that would be very much too simple! If you didn't harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you'd run the risk of forgetting yourself. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
652:I am persuaded that in the case of elected officials, the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that it is more important for your constituents that you be reelected than that you deal honestly with them. ~ James L Buckley, #NFDB
653:The shoes themselves were light green, with lowish heels (which were very important for comfort and walking; high heels were always a temptation, but, like all temptations, one paid for them later). ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
654:The temptation to draw her in and destroy her the way I do everything else is too much. She is young. Pliable. Vulnerable. Looking for someone to guide her in a way that I can’t. I would only ever corrupt her. ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
655:What is the devotion if there is no temptation which is master on their own? The man is not God and his strength is just in that to suppress its nature, if there is nothing to suppress what's the difference? ~ Me a Selimovi, #NFDB
656:Fear can supplant our real problems only to the extent -unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it -we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
657:In Gone Girl, Amy talks about the temptation of being the woman a man wants, but ultimately she doesn't give in to the temptation to be "the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn't ever complain. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
658:People are fascinated with eternal life and physical power - the idea of having no vulnerability. We all feel small and powerless in the world at times, so the temptation to be a vampire is compelling. ~ Alexandra Cassavetes, #NFDB
659:The greatest temptation you will ever have in your life is to give up on what you truly want because it seemed to difficult to have. If you put your loyalty into anything, put it into believing in yourself. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
660:I nibbled my lower lip. "If you could see into my past just by touching my back, you'd have a hard time resisting the temptation too." "I have a hard time keeping my hands off you without that added bonus. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
661:Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
662:Man has always been dexterous at confusing evil with good. That was Adam's and Eve's problem, and it is our problem today. If evil were not made to appear attractive, there would be no such thing as temptation. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
663:The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.' And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, 'That path leads ever down into stagnation. ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
664:It is not cowardly to flee temptation, and nobody whose opinion is worth having will ridicule any brave attempt to conquer one's self. Don't mind it, Charlie, but stand fast, and I am sure you will succeed. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
665:Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
666:It’s not until situations are difficult, when problems come up and temptation is great, that you get to prove your worthiness for progress. As Jim Rohn would say, “Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
667: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, #NFDB
668:A trustworthy marriage has weathered temptation and anger and jealousy, resentment, self-righteousness and a little bit of selfishness. When you get over and get through that, then maybe you can see the light to love. ~ Ruby Dee, #NFDB
669:At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself. ~ Jean Paul Sartre, #NFDB
670:Creative people have a barrage of ideas running through their brains on a regular basis. Without self-discipline, we face a temptation to jump from one idea to the next without completing anything on a large scale. ~ John Herrick, #NFDB
671:It was one of those summers you’re nostalgic for even before it passes. Pale, bled skies. Thunderstorms in the night. Sour-smelling dawns. It brought temptation, and yearning, and ache – these are the summer things. ~ Kevin Barry, #NFDB
672:The kiss is sweeter than sin and fiercer than temptation. I am not gentle, I am not kind; I am rough and wild and savage. I bite, I nip, I lick, I devour. I want and I want and I want and I want. I hold nothing back. ~ S Jae Jones, #NFDB
673:We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We're just going to stay the course. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
674:What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
675:When sins become civil rights, there is a temptation for Christians to keep our mouths shut and turn what is supposed to be a public faith into a private faith, but we are commanded to not be ashamed of the gospel. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
676:It was as if I were powerless to resist the temptation; my senses were overcome. I could hear the emptiness, and taste the silence, and smell the solitude, and I wanted it more than I have ever wanted anything before. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
677:She was temptation wrapped in seduction, a Southern beauty with a viper’s tongue, a
rapier wit and a bone-deep grit that rivaled his own. Yes, she’d basically blown his mind with her
brilliant concept of time ~ Gena Showalter,#NFDB
678:I nibbled my lower lip. "If you could see into my past just by touching my back, you'd have a hard time resisting the temptation too."
"I have a hard time keeping my hands off you without that added bonus. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
679:My Christmas prayer is that I would remain close to God, and He close to me. With all the suffering in the world today, there is the temptation to fall to fear… we need to be near the Lord.. we need the Hope of Christmas. ~ Don Moen, #NFDB
680:Since all human governments, like all human individuals, are subject to temptation, especially the temptation to use this God-given role for their own ends, there must be clear and wise critique, and holding to account. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
681:And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway, And mind your duty, duly, morn and night; Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, Implore His counsel and assisting might: They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright. ~ Robert Burns, #NFDB
682:It is not hard to make money in the market. What is hard to avoid is the alluring temptation to throw your money away on short, get-rich-quick speculative binges. It is an obvious lesson, but one frequently ignored. ~ Burton G Malkiel, #NFDB
683:Lindell had seen too many of these women who subordinated themselves, but could also feel the temptation of giving in to a more traditional woman’s role. It would be so easy to be like her mother. So seemingly secure. ~ Kjell Eriksson, #NFDB
684:Sometimes it's just 'Oh my God, I love the taste of fried oysters on French bread with mayonnaise and an order of French fries.' I'm not going to lie to you - I deal with that temptation every single day, many times. ~ Richard Simmons, #NFDB
685:The confirmed stick-in-the-mud will always fall victim to the interventions of other people acting on impulse, because if habit is his religion, then his Satan is change, and in the end, we are all prey to temptation. ~ Michael Chabon, #NFDB
686:After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance. Accordingly, it presents an almost overwhelming temptation – how can I not be excused the occasional mockery? ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
687:Few people can resist the temptation to try a little amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have been had they only taken it up seriously. ~ M R James, #NFDB
688:Not anymore, the beast inside me roars. You’re no longer employed by Storm Industries. You can do what you want. The temptation to take her, to make her mine, has grown into a savage hunger which won’t be satisfied... ~ Magda Alexander, #NFDB
689:Shared memories; triumphs and tragedies; the heroine doing right in the end despite temptation—all the plots of all the movies I’ve written tangled together into one gigantic ball of yarn I couldn’t begin to unravel. ~ Melanie Benjamin, #NFDB
690:If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance, no satisfaction (profit apart) in constructing a factory, a railway, a mine or a farm, there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation. ~ John Maynard Keynes, #NFDB
691:But it’s the temptation of so many suburban-raised children to invent tales of adversity, to create hardscrabble mythologies out of life histories marked by little more than field hockey games and orthodontist appointments. ~ Meghan Daum, #NFDB
692:No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire. ~ James Lovelock, #NFDB
693:Once you make a movie like 'Superbad,' when it's popular and you're the lead, you get offered all kinds of things and there's a temptation to make bad movies either for the money or to maintain your relevance in pop culture. ~ Jonah Hill, #NFDB
694:Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
695:That was the hazard she’d face every day, here: not just the risk that she’d give in to temptation, but the risk that all the principles she’d chosen to define herself would come to seem like nothing but masochistic nonsense. ~ Greg Egan, #NFDB
696:We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
697:God tested Abraham. Temptation is not meant to make us fail; it is meant to confront us with a situation out of which we emerge stronger than we were. Temptation is not the penalty of manhood; it is the glory of manhood. ~ William Barclay, #NFDB
698: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 its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
699:Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections; to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
700:Sin isn’t something that is attracted to a human being, Professor. It’s the other way round.”
“Not in my experience. Sin seems to find me even when I’m not looking for it. And I’m not very good at resisting temptation. ~ Sylvain Reynard,#NFDB
701:the promise of sanctification is able to turn what may feel like a test today, like a trial by fire—like way more temptation or trouble than we can handle—into a muscle-building exercise that strengthens our spiritual core. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
702:At that moment there was a glimmer of understanding for all those wayward ladies who succumbed to temptation. If it feels like this, she thought as his mouth traveled down the curve of her neck, tasting and teasing, no wonder. ~ Emma Wildes, #NFDB
703:To those men and women in business, remember the ultimate end of your work: to make a better product, to create better lives. I ask you to plan for the longer term and avoid that temptation of quick and easy paper profits. ~ George H W Bush, #NFDB
704:By the time that poem became the story “River of Names,”* I had made the decision to reverse that process: to claim my family, my true history, and to tell the truth not only about who I was but about the temptation to lie. ~ Dorothy Allison, #NFDB
705:The Muslim is inclined to believe that man has something more important to do than engage in a wrestling match with temptation, which he sees as a distraction from his principle business, the constant awareness of God. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton, #NFDB
706: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, #NFDB
707:Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a startup can make. The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
708:[I]t is the maxim of the saints that when a matter has been decided in the presence of God after many prayers and the seeking of advice, we must reject and consider as a temptation whatever is suggested to the contrary. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
709:Stephen rubbed at his face. “Look, I have three choices. I never see you again so I’m not tempted; I give in to temptation and milk you for power until I’m a raging madman; or I control myself. I don’t like the first two options. ~ K J Charles, #NFDB
710:13No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
711:The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing.
Life is simple.
You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you aren't. You are alive or you are dead.
I am alive. ~ Greg Iles,#NFDB
712:And for the first time he understood. What temptation meant. It stood before him, made flesh and wit and intellect and desire, making its simple offer of everything, unstoppable and consuming for all it's unconditional generosity. ~ Olivia Gates, #NFDB
713:He had hired more mature women to negate any physical temptation, but, as a rule, they had been bossy, maternal, menopausal, and they had more doctors’ appointments, as well as aches and pains to talk about and funerals to attend. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
714:when people see situations that need to change, the temptation is to immediately apply a behavioral solution. That seems like the fast approach. But if mindset is not addressed, it is usually the slow approach to change. ~ The Arbinger Institute, #NFDB
715:Your cable television is experiencing difficulties. Please do not panic. Resist the temptation to read or talk to loved ones. Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of TV radiation have left your genitals withered and useless. ~ Matt Groening, #NFDB
716:As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honesty is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
717:Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole. ~ Thomas Nagel, #NFDB
718:Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That’s why it’s good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. “Lead us not into temptation. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
719:If Eve went door to door with her apple, not a soul in the Artemisia wouldn't have grabbed it, planted a kiss on old Mama Fig Leaf, and had that shiny red temptation turned into the applejack of good and evil within an hour. ~ Catherynne M Valente, #NFDB
720:One of the problems with teaching is that there's a temptation to evaluate what we do in the classroom based on how clever it aligns with a larger philosophy , or even how gratifying it is to use not necessarily how effective it is... ~ Doug Lemov, #NFDB
721:She is a fool in too many ways to number: in affairs of infidelity, if a man strays, it is not the fault of the woman with whom he lays. A worthy heart eschews temptation, despite the magnitude. Clearly my heart is not worthy. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
722:It struck me, sharp and hard, that I had been given so many chances to save my soul that my entire life had been constructed around these chances! That was my nature - going from temptation to temptation, not to sin, but to be redeemed. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
723:Jesus resisted the temptation of outrage and the quick fix of condemnation. He spent most of his time preparing wineskins before pouring new wine into them. Our tendency is to start pouring the wine into skins that will only burst. ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
724:They saw that temptation coming but neither fought it off nor turned away from it toward something else. Simply, briefly, they chose not to hop on board with it. What did they do instead? Nothing. They let their spaciousness be. This ~ Gerald G May, #NFDB
725:13No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. w God is faithful, and x he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
726:but yet I was bound in the wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry me away. I thought also of Saul, and of the evil spirit that did possess him: and did greatly fear that my condition was the same with that of his. 1 Sam. x. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
727:He’s still smiling, and he needs to stop, because I can’t handle those straight white teeth grinning at me when I know there’s a monster cock hidden beneath that scrap of fabric. I’m just not built to withstand that kind of temptation. ~ Meghan March, #NFDB
728:I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing. ~ David Brin, #NFDB
729:It was an obsession, it was a compulsion. "The way to banish temptation is to give into it," the saying went. Maybe if she experienced a gangbang, it wouldn't be such a big deal, and would no longer be the focus of her sexual imagination. ~ Nikki Sex, #NFDB
730:Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
731:Mankind, I suppose, is designed to run on—to be motivated by—temptation. If progress is a virtue then this is our greatest gift. (For what is curiosity if not intellectual temptation? And what progress is there without curiosity?) ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
732:Really? And what curse befalls the Adams of the world?" Ann opens her mouth and, presumably thinking of nothing to say, closes it again. It is Felicity who answers, eyes steely. "They are weak to temptation. And we are their temptresses. ~ Libba Bray, #NFDB
733:[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain? ~ Frank Harris, #NFDB
734:That acknowledgment of weakness which we make in imploring to be relieved from hunger and from temptation is surely wisely put in our daily prayer. Think of it, you who are rich, and take heed how you turn a beggar away. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
735:Few people achieve greatness. One reason is that the opportunity, for the vast majority of us, never even shows up. Another is that if it does, it will inevitably look like a long shot. And the temptation invariably is to play it safe. ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
736:Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
737:The city is always influential in the work, though I've had that temptation to leave, but only recently. It's difficult because whenever I start working someplace else, I'm like, "Man, this would have been better if I had my subwoofer." ~ Flying Lotus, #NFDB
738:We all know that, when caught off our guard, there comes a dark temptation from the depths of our lower selves, something atavistic stirs, and we think thoughts, or even do deeds, of which we would never have believed ourselves capable. ~ Dion Fortune, #NFDB
739:When James taught about temptation, he said each of us is tempted when we are drawn away by our own desires. “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15). ~ Jentezen Franklin, #NFDB
740:I am human because God made me. I experience suffering and temptation because mankind chose to follow Satan. God is reaching out to me to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
741:Toombs sees me. This man I’ve admired in agonizing silence for so long sees me.
And I see him too. Up close, in vivid colors. He’s a moving symphony of darkness, wicked temptation, and macabre tattoos.
He’s beautiful. ~ Kendall Grey,#NFDB
742:Which is how most people acted when it came to temptation. They gave in. And we should never forget, thought Isabel, that every one of us is capable of doing the same thing if the game that we see for ourselves is large enough. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
743:Why did the stories I knew best never end well?
But why too did I feel at home among them?
I could never give up the myths, the maps, the ship that had shaped me.
Blake’s home might be paradise, but my home was the Temptation. ~ Heidi Heilig,#NFDB
744:Willpower is what separates us from the animals. It's the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation - do what's right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It's central, in fact, to civilisation. ~ Roy Baumeister, #NFDB
745: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, #NFDB
746:Now toasted cheese is a temptation few men can resist, be they charcoal burners or kings. John Uskglass reasoned thus: all of Cumbria belonged to him – therefore this wood belonged to him – therefore this toasted cheese belonged to him. ~ Susanna Clarke, #NFDB
747:But it’s an understandable temptation for investigators to view criminals as mythic opponents, to create a theory of violence that looks at the gun, not at where it’s pointing. Because when you take away the monster, what are you left with? ~ Alice Bolin, #NFDB
748:if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. You’d resist the temptation to dabble. You’d make more good decisions and you’d make more big decisions. ~ Alice Schroeder, #NFDB
749:There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. ~ Paul the Apostle, #NFDB
750:You have; and I’ve restrained a good many of them,” replied the insect. “But there are opportunities for so many excellent puns in our language that, to an educated person like myself, the temptation to express them is almost irresistible. ~ L Frank Baum, #NFDB
751:But often, it's easier to resist temptation with distraction, or to be so inculcated in doing the right thing that it's automatic, outside the frontal cortex's portfolio - Then it isn't the harder thing, it's the only thing you can do. ~ Robert M Sapolsky, #NFDB
752:It is very easy to see the allure of alcohol to dull the prain and the temptation to punish myself for something that is not my fault. But he sobering truth is that if I step onto the path of self-destruction, I know I will never come back. ~ Bill Jenkins, #NFDB
753:The temptation is for us to share our own opinions, our own thoughts and to speak from the whole realm of possibility. We can't do that as pastors. We need to have a strong voice of conviction, and the way we can do that is through Scripture. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
754:We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
755:By God’s grace, I can resist the temptation to treat my children as interruptions to my will for my life. Instead, God enables me to treat my children as precious gifts he is using to shape me into his image according to his will for my life. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
756:The more we see that any action springs not from the motive of obedience, the more evident is it that it is a temptation of the enemy; for when God sends an inspiration, the very first effect of it is to infuse a spirit of docility. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #NFDB
757:There are in truth three states of the converted: the beginning, the middle, and the perfection. In the beginning they experience the charms of sweetness; in the middle the contests of temptation; and in the end the fullness of perfection. ~ Pope Gregory I, #NFDB
758: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. ~ Seneca,#NFDB
759:By God’s grace I can resist the temptation to treat my children as interruptions to my will for my life. Instead, God enables me to treat my children as precious gifts he is using to shape me into his image according to his will for my life. ~ Gloria Furman, #NFDB
760:Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
761:Really? And what curse befalls the Adams of the world?"
Ann opens her mouth and, presumably thinking of nothing to say, closes it again.
It is Felicity who answers, eyes steely. "They are weak to temptation. And we are their temptresses. ~ Libba Bray,#NFDB
762:She'd never been able to resist temptation - especially an unhealthy one - and at that moment he was another pill, another line; one she needed, one she would die if she couldn't have, and her entire body was already vibrating in anticipation. ~ Stacia Kane, #NFDB
763:After an error you need not only to remove the causes but also to correct the error itself: after a sin you must not only, if possible, remove the temptation, you must also go back and repent the sin itself. In each case an 'undoing' is required. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
764:'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, #NFDB
765:No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free; let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all. ~ Herbert Spencer, #NFDB
766:Some people are tempted most strongly at the beginning of their spiritual life, others near the end. Some are troubled all their lives. Still others receive only light temptation. Such things are decided by God, and we can trust his wisdom. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
767:The challenge facing us today is not so much the temptation to be relevant to the point that we lose the gospel, but the tendency to unknowingly accept a secular understanding of our faith while believing that we are boldly declaring the gospel. ~ Alan Noble, #NFDB
768:This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea, and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
769:Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously proscribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct. ~ William H Prescott, #NFDB
770:13No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
771:In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department. ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
772:I try to avoid the temptation with time as a total indicator for what my possibilities are for the marathon. It's the not the best indicator, but it's more how you feel, how you cover the distance and how you are able to do the training afterward. ~ Ryan Hall, #NFDB
773:It's all about getting the hand of things. Easy does it; take it easy. You'll figure everything out in time. But for right now, just keep trying. Pay attention and avoid the temptation to go further than you're ready. Talk less. And listen more. ~ Kate Jacobs, #NFDB
774:Oh, honey, if you look close enough, everything is in those eyes. That’s why they’re so dark. They are full. Full of every secret, every promise, and every temptation that can make a good girl do really bad things and enjoy every second of it. ~ Jay Crownover, #NFDB
775:If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
776:Good and evil, as we term them, are not antagonistic; they are ever found hand in hand. Humanity has never achieved a single conquest without the aid of both. Indeed how can she? What adds to moral strength, but a grappling with temptation? ~ Sarah Moore Grimke, #NFDB
777:It was the women being cheated on because the temptation was too strong for their unfaithful men. I feel people’s pain, and I want to rescue them. I want to tell them they are better than the images people have of them. That they are beautiful. ~ Jennae Cecelia, #NFDB
778:October 26
Endure Temptation
Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
-James 1:12
Scripture reading: Psalm 139 ~ Smith Wigglesworth,#NFDB
779:You have no shot at experiencing real change in life if you’re habitually protecting your image, hyping your spiritual brand, and putting out the vibe that you’re a lot more unfazed by temptation than the reality you know and live would suggest. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
780:I might not survive Clare. She was truly my ultimate temptation. I never wanted anything more and yet fought so hard against it. But I knew I needed this. I knew she needed this. I had to start this off right. She deserved it, she deserved everything. ~ J L Berg, #NFDB
781:No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:13 ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
782:For every sentient being is God—omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, and eternal—pretending with the utmost sincerity and determination to be otherwise, to be a mere creature subject to failure, pain, death, temptation, hellfire, and ultimate tragedy. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
783:I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred. ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
784: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, #NFDB
785:I know of a number of people who are successfully earning to give. That isn't for everyone but for those with the ability to earn a lot of money and the character to resist the temptation to spend it on themselves, it can be a great way to do good. ~ Peter Singer, #NFDB
786:Resist the temptation to explain to her that she is misinterpreting what you said. Once the hurt is there it needs to be heard if it is to be healed. Explanations are helpful only after the hurt is healed with some validation and caring understanding. ~ John Gray, #NFDB
787:The moment you have a self there is the temptation to put it forward, to put it first and at the center of things. And the more we are--socially or intellectually or politically or economically--the greater the risk of increasing self-worship. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
788:We are at a moment of temptation, ready to turn to machines for companionship even as we seem pained or inconvenienced to engage with each other in settings as simple as a grocery store. We want technology to step up as we ask people to step back. ~ Sherry Turkle, #NFDB
789:When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
790:It’s all you, Mia … You’re different from the rest. I tried to resist the temptation, but all it took was one taste and you had me. Everywhere I look, everything I do, every spare moment of every single day, all I see is you. All I want is you. ~ B J Harvey, #NFDB
791:Some have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my Letters were the ripe fruit of many years' study in moral and ascetic theology. They forgot that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
792:There is not much virtue in going down the slope; all can do that for the natural gravitation of the consciousness is downward. He is the hero who resists the temptation to let himself slip, even for a moment, even to the extent of a hairs breadth.
~ M P Pandit,#NFDB
793:The temptation to become a god is fatal. Jung felt this was the ever-present danger of modern humanity: if we do not objectify the spirit as a sacred force and treat it with respect, we fall to a lower level and become possessed by spirit gone wrong. ~ David Tacey, #NFDB
794:Resist the temptation to stir in mashed bananas, applesauce, or fruit juices, or to buy prepared cereal with fruit (even down the road, after you’ve introduced these fruits), or your baby will quickly come to accept only sweet foods, rejecting all else. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
795: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 abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
796:Ben & Jerry’s avoided temptation for years. If they didn’t have a super-cool flavor or a great promotional idea, they did nothing. Yes to free ice cream once a year at every scoop shop, but no to 5 percent off any pint this week at your local store. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
797:Temptation isn’t impersonal—there is an actual enemy doing the tempting. Mark treats Satan as a reality, not a myth. This is certainly jarring in contemporary cultures that are skeptical of the existence of the supernatural, let alone the demonic. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
798:When we distract ourselves, we purposefully redirect our thoughts, and by doing so, we change our experience. Distraction can help us resist temptation, minimize stress, feel refreshed, and tolerate pain, and it can help us stick to our good habits. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
799:First, I need to convince you that human progress has, on balance, been a good thing, and that, despite the constant temptation to moan, the world is as good a place to live as it has ever been for the average human being – even now in a deep recession. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
800:No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
801:But a quick-acting poison, that’s different. It strikes with blind swiftness. You can be bit by temptation anytime. It is a thought, a direction, a noise in your brain, a hunch, an intuition that leads you to darker places than you’ve ever imagined. I ~ Louise Erdrich, #NFDB
802:I heard a doctor say that the living tend to withdraw emotionally from the dying, thereby driving them deeper into isolation. Not to withdraw takes tremendous strength. To pull back is a temptation; it doesn't hurt nearly as much as remaining open. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
803:We must now surrender to the obligation to understand and to care. We must surrender ourselves to becoming conscious, thinking members of the human race. We must put down the temptation to powerlessness and surrender to the questions of the moment. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
804:Let love therefore be what it will, my Uncle Toby fell into it—And possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation so wouldst thou: For never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet, anything in this world more concupiscible than widow Wadman. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
805:TEN BEST NEW ORDER SONGS 1.‘Thieves Like Us’ 2.‘Leave Me Alone’ 3.‘Homage’ (unreleased) 4.‘Too Late’ (John Peel session) 5.‘Someone Like You’ 6.‘Ruined in a Day’ (K-Klass Remix) 7.‘Every Little Counts’ 8.‘Age of Consent’ 9.‘Temptation’ 10.‘Elegia ~ Peter Hook, #NFDB
806:Writing is a difficult question, since it is not only a blessing but also a bad temptation because it tickles the devil of self-importance. If you want to write something, you have to be quite sure that the whole of your being wants this kind of expression. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
807:A lot of my music is just self-observation. Like telling you, "Oh man. What did I just do? How much did I just pay for this chain? Why did I do that? Wait a minute." Let me talk about that. Or like, the temptation. Let me talk about that. Let me observe myself. ~ J Cole, #NFDB
808:I saw a list of words written in the bold, slanted script running along the left-hand margin: breakfast, Italy, dream, beauty, temptation, goal, wish, love, future, laughter, hope, heaven. Next to each word my name had been written in the same bold script. ~ Lisa Mangum, #NFDB
809:It often happens that we pray God to deliver us from some dangerous temptation, and yet that God does not hear us, but permits the temptation to continue troubling us. In such a case, let us understand that God permits even this for our greater good. ~ Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
810:Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
811:We must teach our children that the preservation of liberty, and of an order of society conducive to human dignity, requires that a free people retain the moral and material means to discipline its own government, should the temptation to tyranny take root. ~ Alan Keyes, #NFDB
812:an essential part of many martial arts disciplines. Staying curious and open is what makes growth possible, and it requires practice to maintain that mindset. To keep learning, we have to avoid the temptation to slide into narrow, safe views of what we do. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
813:The command of a large sum is a dangerous temptation to a national administration. Though accumulated at their expense, the people rarely, if ever profit by it: yet in point of fact, all value, and consequently, all wealth, originates with the people. ~ Jean Baptiste Say, #NFDB
814:With any major decision there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
815:your actions are all right so far; but I would have your thoughts changed; I would have you to fortify yourself against temptation, and not to call evil good, and good evil; I should wish you to think more deeply, to look further, and aim higher than you do. ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
816:A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
817:So, what you're saying is that I bring out your book - wielding, short tempered side?" He hooked his foot through the straps of my backpack and brought in front of him. "Removing temptation."
I gave him a look that communicated he should wither and die. ~ Lani Woodland,#NFDB
818:Before?” Roo went on. “When he walked by? He was talking to you in French. Well…Cajun French, actually.”
“He was?” Miranda wanted to let it go, but the temptation was just too great. “What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘Let’s get to know each other. ~ Richie Tankersley Cusick,#NFDB
819:Every story has more than one side, like a crystal that captures and reflects different colors of light. Do not take for granted what you think you know, for until you hold the entire jewel in your palm, the temptation is to fall prey to illusion and deception. ~ Aja James, #NFDB
820:These two norms undergirded American democracy for most of the twentieth century. Leaders of the two major parties accepted one another as legitimate and resisted the temptation to use their temporary control of institutions to maximum partisan advantage. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
821:What we are taught to seek or shun in prayer, we should equally pursue or avoid in action. Very earnestly, therefore, should we avoid temptation, seeking to walk so guardedly in the path of obedience, that we may never tempt the devil to tempt us. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
822:You’d get very rich if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. You’d resist the temptation to dabble. You’d make more good decisions and you’d make more big decisions. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
823:All Saints have passed through much tribulation and temptation, and have profited thereby. And they who endured not temptation became reprobate and fell away. There is no position so sacred, no place so secret, that it is without temptations and adversities. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
824:attention has become our most precious asset. To spend it wisely, we must develop a better understanding of how temptation works on our brains, cultivate new strategies for enhancing our self-control, and carve out time to truly focus on big, creative tasks. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
825:Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
826:But absurdist tapeworms and Antoinette’s fever are ills from which, in the nature of the case, Christians are immune, except for occasional spells of derangement when the power of temptation presses their minds out of shape—and these, by God’s mercy, do not last. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
827:Do not bargain with any temptation; lock yourself immediately in My[Jesus] Heart and, at the first opportunity, reveal the temptation to the confessor.....Do not fear struggle; courage itself often intimidates temptations, and they dare not attack us. ~ Mary Faustina Kowalska, #NFDB
828:It is like his Father, too, not to withhold good wine because men abuse it. Enforced virtue is unworthy of the name. That men may rise above temptation, it is needful that they should have temptation. It is the will of him who makes the grapes and the wine. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
829:It often happens that we pray God to deliver us from some dangerous temptation, and yet that God does not hear us, but permits the temptation to continue troubling us. In such a case, let us understand that God permits even this for our greater good. ~ Saint Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
830:Temptation isn’t a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
831:It's so hard, when you fall for someone—the temptation is to look back on the past and rewrite things so they seem more significant. There's a part of me going: Did I know? Did I know the first time we met that you would change everything? That you would change me? ~ Nick Lake, #NFDB
832:Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
833:Reading the Apocalypse, we must always fight the temptation to strain for the extravagant while denying the obvious. I’ll say it again: Often the deepest meaning in Scripture is very near to the heart of each of us, and the widest application is very close to home. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
834:But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish desires and schemes that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For love of money is the root of all of evil and some having pursued its power, fall from faith and end in sorrow. ~ Saint Timothy, #NFDB
835:For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward. ~ Erma Bombeck, #NFDB
836:Ten or fifteen years later, a large gap had opened between those who had resisted temptation and those who had not. The resisters had higher measures of executive control in cognitive tasks, and especially the ability to reallocate their attention effectively. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
837:That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette, #NFDB
838:I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years. ~ Tony Hoare, #NFDB
839:I look at modern life and I see people not taking responsibility for their lives. The temptation to blame, to find external causes to one's own issues is something that is particularly modern. I know that personally I find that sense of responsibility interesting. ~ Edward Zwick, #NFDB
840:It’s dangerous applying hindsight to something as complex as why someone wrote a poem, because the temptation is to try and make it make sense. We can apply reason, but what we can’t do is apply the storms and variations that govern a human mind moment to moment. ~ Michael Poore, #NFDB
841:Temptation, then, in general, is any thing, state, way, or condition that, upon any account whatsoever, has a force or efficacy to seduce, to draw the mind and heart of a man from its obedience, which God requires of him, into any sin, in any degree of it whatsoever. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
842:The most critical case in a corporation, especially a big one, is when everything goes well, when you have accomplished your objectives. When the temptation is to work twice as hard instead of saying, "We have accomplished our objectives, we have to think again." ~ Peter Drucker, #NFDB
843:When you're first starting out, there's always the temptation to hide behind distortion because it lets you get away with murder. But, when it comes to rhythm work, you've gotta back off that gain control a bit, especially if you're playing with another guitarist. ~ Kirk Hammett, #NFDB
844:He held her forever. Ashy flickers swam in his eyes, shadows of temptation drawing her into infinite depths. A breath away from his tantalising mouth, she parted her lips. The thudding of her pulse hurt. The knocking of her heart brushed her soul. She sank into him. ~ Chris Lange, #NFDB
845:Humans cannot reject temptation. When they are plunged into the depths of despair, likened to hell, they will hold on to anything that may help them escape from the situation they are in, even if it's merely a spider's thread, no matter what sort of humans they are. ~ Yana Toboso, #NFDB
846:The best way to keep yourself from doing something grossly self-destructive and stupid is to avoid the temptation to do it. For example, it is far easier to fend off inappropriate amorous desires if one runs screaming from the room every time a pretty girl comes in. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
847:What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
848:no temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
849:The next time you experience a creative block, resist the temptation to doubt yourself, or to put in more blind effort. Stop and ask yourself what kind of block you are experiencing. Once you’re clear about the nature of the problem, it will be easier to solve it. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
850:Even the acceptance of personal responsibility may not overcome the temptation to believe that now is not the time to repent. 'Now' can seem so difficult, and 'later' appear so much easier. The truth is that today is always a better day to repent than any tomorrow. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
851:Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction. ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
852:most suicidal teens are different; they’re tempted to kill themselves. with me, i know i need to die; i should be killed for the things i’ve done. but i keep feeling this nudge, this TEMPTATION TO LIVE. and everyday i pray to god that i never lose that temptation. ~ Jake Vander Ark, #NFDB
853:He who ponders these things [death, poverty, temptation, and suffering] in his heart is indeed full of joy; but it is not a cheerful joy. It is just this joy, however, of which I would have you become the owner; for it will never fail you when once you have found its source. ~ Seneca, #NFDB
854:I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science. ~ John Polkinghorne, #NFDB
855:Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
856:Owen had come along and I had fallen in love with him. I had not known then that it is not necessary to marry every man one loves. I know it now. Now I realize that it is marriage which is the great temptation for a woman, and that one can, and perhaps should, resist ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
857:people are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods such as radishes and celery while resisting the temptation to indulge in chocolate and rich cookies. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
858:There has never been any forbidden fruit. Only temptation is divine. To feel the need to vary the object of this temptation, to replace it by others — this bears witness that one is about to be found unworthy, that one has already doubtless proved unworthy of innocence … ~ Andr Breton, #NFDB
859:They (the consecrated) are men and woman who can awaken the world. Consecrated life is prophecy. God asks us to fly the nest and to be sent to the frontiers of the world, avoiding the temptation to 'domesticate' them. This is the most concrete way of imitating the Lord. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
860:This makes it sound as if light has intentionality, and I resisted the temptation to say light considers all paths and chooses the one that takes the least time because I fully expect that Deepak Chopra would later quote me as implying that light has consciousness. ~ Lawrence M Krauss, #NFDB
861:Eyes speak louder than words; life is precious; hate is poison; God is the best of all possible friends; silence and time are valuable treasures; happiness can be just as powerful in pretend; and soft licorice is a temptation in any color, especially exotic black. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
862:The mind creates so many temptations - so alluring they are, so magnetic is their power - that unless you are in the power-field of someone whose magnetism is far more powerful than any other kind of temptation, it is impossible to reach. That is the meaning of disciplehood. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
863:Whether something is old-fashioned or not doesn't resolve the question of whether it's true or not. I can see the temptation of simply thinking, 'Well, there's a cultural mainstream which flows neatly in one direction. You just align with it'. And that really won't do. ~ Rowan Williams, #NFDB
864:Although all believers are subject to many failings and can fall before the smallest temptation, their determination to continue in the faith and their gradual and progressive sanctification are great evidences of salvation and provide a solid ground for assurance. 1 ~ Paul David Washer, #NFDB
865:Exactly.” Irma nodded, thoughtful. “I always figured that was because our greatest temptation wouldn’t be the big guns on the sin list — murder and theft and the rest. But something so simple we might overlook it. The temptation to hold a grudge.” “The call to forgive. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
866:Temptation isn’t a vice you triumph over once, completely, and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows just the way you take it, heavy on the sin. ~ Karen Marie Moning, #NFDB
867:You want this?'
I raised my gaze, gasping at the dark hunger in his expression. My mind blanked. Want his body? How could I not? He was pure temptation.
'I meant this,' he held up my bag, 'but I could easily be persuaded to share anything else my wife might desire. ~ Kresley Cole,#NFDB
868:I understand the temptation to sell short, but I also know that impulse is driven by your mind’s desire for comfort, and it’s not telling you the truth. It’s your identity trying to find sanctuary, not help you grow. It’s looking for status quo, not reaching for greatness ~ David Goggins, #NFDB
869:Lead us not into temptation' often means, among other things, 'Deny me those gratifying invitations, those highly interesting contacts, that participation in the brilliant movements of our age, which I so often, at such risk, desire.'
Reflections on the Psalms, ch 7 ~ C S Lewis,#NFDB
870:She could see how easily someone could succumb to the hex music weaved over them, the temptation to lose oneself within the hypnotic trance-like beats. No thoughts of the future, or the past, only the immediate present, as if life itself had condensed into a single moment. ~ James Morris, #NFDB
871:C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
872:Human cultures vary widely in the plants they use to gratify the desire for a change of mind, but all cultures (save the Eskimo) sanction at least one such plant and, just as invariably, strenuously forbid certain others. Along with the temptation seems to come the taboo. ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
873:If I were to taste your mouth now, I couldn't answer for the consequences. So I can only adore this beautiful neck. I know that in a few seconds I will have to pull away, before the temptation becomes too much. It's too much already. You have no idea how much I want you. ~ Sylvain Reynard, #NFDB
874:In the temporal sphere, the temptation to evil inherent in every power is certainly unceasing. Only in God is the conflict between power and good ultimately resolved. But the desire to escape this conflict by rejecting every earthly power would lead to the worst inhumanity. ~ Carl Schmitt, #NFDB
875:Temptation can be tormenting, but remember: The torment of temptation to sin is nothing to compare with the torment of the consequences of sin. Remorse and regret cannot compensate for sin....though sins can be forgiven immediately - the consequences can last a lifetime ~ Edwin Louis Cole, #NFDB
876:I guess if you were going to do something so stupid as to be president, you would want to go for something big.” “I think so. The temptation is there. I mean, you wouldn’t do it thinking, Hey, now that I’m president I’ll play it safe, hope nothing happens. Would you? ~ Kim Stanley Robinson, #NFDB
877:Nevertheless, I think that the content should be accessible to many people, if they put some thought into it and resist the temptation to instantaneously misunderstand each new idea by assimilating it with the most similar-sounding cliché available in their cultural larders. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
878:[Political] conventions lend themselves to pandering, as few politicians can resist the temptation to tell a national television audience how well they will run the country if elected. The problem is that government is not supposed to run the country - we're supposed to be free. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
879:The day of the week on which the tour took place was known to all workers. All devices in its path ought to have been carefully neutralized or locked, since it was unreasonable to expect human beings to withstand the temptation to handle knobs, keys, handles and pushbuttons. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
880:Therapy could be of tremendous benefit to “getting over” one’s past if the therapy is focused on specific ways to stop submitting to the temptation to obsess. Many people with difficult histories carry these histories with them, burnishing the past with each retelling. ~ Augusten Burroughs, #NFDB
881:The plodding thrift and scrupulous integrity and long-winded patient industry of our business men of the last century are out of fashion in these "giddy-paced" times, and England is forgetting that those who make haste to be rich can hardly avoid much temptation and some sin. ~ Fanny Kemble, #NFDB
882:To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of “historical necessity,” but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. The ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
883:Nice try,' he murmured, his lips brushing mine as he spoke.
I nibbled his lower lip. 'If you could see into my past just by touching my back, you'd have a hard time resisting the temptation too.'
'I have a hard time keeping my hands off you without that added bonus. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
884:The definition of a good man is someone who makes the moral choice when temptation invites him to do otherwise. The definition of a hero is someone who makes that moral choice even when temptation, threat of reprisal, and the mores of his culture invite him to do otherwise. ~ Lindsay Buroker, #NFDB
885:How could we even begin to disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinising our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced. ~ Ernst F Schumacher, #NFDB
886:It’s important to connect the so-called temptation with its actual effects. Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal. In this way, self-control becomes the real pleasure, and the temptation becomes the regret. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
887:Leigh did what any sane female faced with such an e-mail would do: deleted it to resist the temptation of replying, cleared her trash to resist the temptation of recalling it, and then called tech support to restore all her recently deleted e-mails. (Chasing Harry Winston) ~ Lauren Weisberger, #NFDB
888:Temptation turns you. It makes you into something you never dreamed, it presses you to give up everything you ever loved, it calls you to sell your soul for one, fleeting moment.[..] It makes you ache...you'll make any promise,swear any oath. For one...perfect...unsoiled taste ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB
889:The fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
890:For goodness that is beyond virtue, and
hence beyond temptation, ignorant of the argumentative reasoning by which man fends off temptations and, by this very process, comes to know the ways, of wickedness, is also incapable of
learning the arts of persuading and arguing. ~ Hannah Arendt,#NFDB
891:I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness. What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad. It was a very strong temptation. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
892:Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation,a but deliver us from the evil one.b ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
893:The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic—perhaps even fatalistic—look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist approach, it helps us identify, avoid, and surmount our likely stumbling blocks. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
894:The temptation to start each day with several glazed donuts and to end it with an extramarital affair might be difficult for some people to resist, for reasons that are easily understood in evolutionary terms, but there are surely better ways to maximize one’s long-term well-being. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
895: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,#NFDB
896:I don’t know who or what you will compare yourself to when you start to hustle, but I promise you will find competition. That is a temptation that even the best of us can’t resist. But when you do, let the competition serve as a source of motivation, not a source of measurement. Then ~ Jon Acuff, #NFDB
897:Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation,[31] but deliver us from the evil one. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
898:In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known. ~ Joanne Harris, #NFDB
899: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, #NFDB
900:I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago - my job was secure. I didn't have to promote myself. These days there's far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won't be lost. ~ David Attenborough, #NFDB
901:Our father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen♥ ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
902:The temptation is too strong for me. Oh, Lord! where is Thy peace that I believed in, in my childhood? – that I hear people speaking of now, as if it hushed up the troubles of life, and had not to be sought for – sought for, as with tears of blood! [-Jemima, chapter 26, pg. 275] ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
903:Alcohol and other drugs may be used to give relief from the depression. But the relief is only temporary, at best, and usually the person just hates himself more for giving in to temptation. Alcohol itself is a depressant, and long-term alcohol abuse may lead to chronic depression ~ Richard O Connor, #NFDB
904:I know they’re true.” “Because?” “Human nature,” he said. “You know how it is. Whatever your intentions, if you have the ability to do something, then you will do it, sooner or later. The temptation is always there, and it can’t be resisted forever. Don’t tell me you think any different. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
905:In other words, for the man and woman to eat from this tree was to reject God as the One who determines good and evil and to assume this responsibility themselves. The temptation in the Garden was to rebel against God’s authority and in the process make humans the arbiters of morality. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
906:Conflict avoidance often leads founders to make easy short-term decisions; they succumb to the temptation to sidestep or postpone acknowledging—not to mention resolving—these dilemmas, especially if coming to a decision would require difficult conversations about what could go wrong. ~ Noam Wasserman, #NFDB
907:I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. ... I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation. . . ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
908:The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists. ~ Paul Davies, #NFDB
909:Whenever a challenge arises, turn inward and ask what power you can exercise in the situation. If you meet temptation, use self-control; if you meet pain, use fortitude; if you meet revulsion, use patience. In this way, you will overcome life’s challenges, rather than be overcome by them. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
910:You can fix things with digital technology and there's a temptation to fix everything or make it perfect and what you're losing there is the human performance that may not be perfect but there may be magic in it. You can make it perfect but music doesn't sound good perfect for some reason. ~ Joe Walsh, #NFDB
911:RULES OF FAIRYLAND-BELOW
BEWARE OF DOG
ANYTHING IMPORTANT COMES IN THREES AND SIXES
DO NOT STEAL QUEENS
A GIRL IN THE WILD IS WORTH TWO IN CHAINS
NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF TEMPTATION
EVERYTHING MUST BE PAID FOR SOONER OR LATER
WHAT GOES DOWN MUST COME UP ~ Catherynne M Valente,#NFDB
912:The righteousness that makes a man visit the sins of a father upon his children, is the righteousness of a devil, not the righteousness of God. When God visits the sins of a father on his children, it is to deliver the child from his own sins through yielding to inherited temptation. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
913:Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
914:God's purpose in creation was to let us prove ourselves. The plan was explained to us in the spirit world before we were born. We were valiant enough there to qualify for the opportunity to choose against temptation here to prepare for eternal life, the greatest of all the gifts of God. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
915:He couldn't help but give in to the occasional temptation to replay past events in his mind, altering them, changing them from cruel to comfortable, from sad to happy, from unfair to accommodating. Anything was possible in his imagination. Any ending. If only thinking it could make it so. ~ Kevin Henkes, #NFDB
916:I'm highly aware that some impulses are harder to ignore than others. I'm aware that fear of consequences causes us to guard our secrets. But it's our actions when faced with temptation that define who we are. It's our courage in admitting what we've done wrong that makes us forgivable. ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
917:Nevertheless, I think that the content should be accessible to many people, if they put some thought into it and resist the temptation to instantaneously misunderstand each new idea by assimilating it with the most similar-sounding cliché available in their cultural larders. Non-technical ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
918:Our Father, who art in Heaven, Halloween Thy Name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive the breast passers, and forgive the breast passes against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. ~ Emmy Laybourne, #NFDB
919:Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. ~ Joseph P Farrell, #NFDB
920:There are those who say that temptation can be barricaded beyond the door. The ones who think that stray desires can be driven out of the heart like the moneychangers from the temple. Maybe they can, if you patrol your weak points day and night, don't look, don't smell, don't dream. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
921:The temptation for farandola or for man or for star is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe. A fara or a man or a star has his place in the universe, but nothing created is the center. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
922:Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
923: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. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
924:We should not only refrain from thinking about gratifying our desires but also avoid focusing on not gratifying our desires. The way to deal with temptation is not to grit our teeth and make up our minds that we will not do a certain thing. The key is to fill our minds with other things. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
925:WHAT TAXES YOUR WILLPOWER Implementing new behaviors Filtering distractions Resisting temptation Suppressing emotion Restraining aggression Suppressing impulses Taking tests Trying to impress others Coping with fear Doing something you don’t enjoy Selecting long-term over short-term rewards ~ Gary Keller, #NFDB
926:Oil kindles extraordinary emotions and hopes, since oil is above all a great temptation. It is the temptation of ease, wealth, strength, fortune, power. It is a filthy, foul-smelling liquid that squirts obligingly up into the air and falls back to earth as a rustling shower of money. ~ Ryszard Kapu ci ski, #NFDB
927:There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat. That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
928:This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea (I think St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
929:Christ's whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness — the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God — one long campaign in which the temptation stands out as the first great battle and victory. ~ Thomas Hughes, #NFDB
930:Ethnicity and tribe began, by definition, where sovereignty and taxes ended. The ethnic zone was feared and stigmatized by state rhetoric precisely because it was beyond its grasp and therefore an example of defiance and an ever-present temptation to those who might wish to evade the state. ~ James C Scott, #NFDB
931:In another experiment, people are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods such as radishes and celery while resisting the temptation to indulge in chocolate and rich cookies. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
932:Take heed all of you who have at heart mankind's future! Take heed men and women of good will! May the temptation to seek revenge give way to the courage to forgive; may the culture of life and love render vain the logic of death; may trust once more give breath to the lives of peoples. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
933:There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
934:Well, what do you think you’re doing, then? Spying?”
“I told you, it’s the unfortunate hotness of evil. Hotness that burns like the flames of cute, cute hell.” Rusty placed his hand on his heart. “But like I said, don’t worry. I will overcome temptation, no matter how temptacious. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,#NFDB
935:You should not be esteemed by others if you have no real inner virtue. People here in Japan esteem others on the basis of outward appearances, without knowing anything about real inner virtue; so students lacking the spirit of the Way are dragged down into bad habits and become subject to temptation. ~ D gen, #NFDB
936:As soon as anybody does one of my songs, I rejoice. This particular case of all these great singers doing my work - the implications are very rich and the temptation to think of the outcome of these masses of the mainstream injecting my work into the marketplace, it's a very sweet speculation. ~ Leonard Cohen, #NFDB
937:hen, there's such a temptation to just constantly write things that are going to make the fans happy. Sometimes it takes a little bit of unhappiness to make those happy pay-offs work better. That's something that is fascinating to us and I think has really changed the way that stories are told. ~ Jeff Pinkner, #NFDB
938:The basic combination of these three things: (1) that the world around us tries to tempt us; (2) that we listen to the world around us (e.g., choice architecture); and (3) that we don’t deal very well with temptation… if you put all of those things together, you have a recipe for disaster. So ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
939:The Lord sometimes allows people who are devoted to Him to fall into such dreadful vices; and this is in order to prevent them from falling into a still greater sin-pride. Your temptation will pass and you will spend the remaining days of your life in humility. Only do not forget your sin. ~ Seraphim of Sarov, #NFDB
940:There's always going to be - I don't care who it is, there's always going to be - the temptation in Washington to seek the favor of the leftist media. It's always gonna be there, no matter who it is. I can only think of one exception, and that's Reagan. It's the rule rather than the exception. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
941:The temptation is to claim that one’s political commitments are somehow uniquely, objectively grounded in reality, therefore undeniable, not a matter of moral choice at all but of mere rationality. This stratagem lends a certain repressive, totalitarian air to even ‘‘moderate’’ political discourse ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
942:We do not need to succumb to the temptation to meet such a violation with retaliation. The only way to heal this hurt is to give voice to what ails us. It is only in this way that we can keep our pain and loss from taking root inside us. It is only in this way that we have a chance for freedom. ~ Desmond Tutu, #NFDB
943:Without thinking, I asked, "Are you afraid of temptation?"
He shook his head. "God, no. Just being with you, just seeing you. Fuck." He mostly swallowed the expletive, his hips rolling in a way that made me think the movement was instinctual, then added on a rush, "You breathing tempts me. ~ Penny Reid,#NFDB
944:You are responsible. It is not about external redemption or temptation. That is the greatest disadvantage of ignorance: to make you think and feel helpless, at the mercy of external holy and evil forces, so you can evade your commitments. You are responsible for what you do and do not do. ~ Frank Ra Exstatica, #NFDB
945:Glaucon’s story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But Paul Feldman sides with Socrates and Adam Smith—for he knows that the answer, at least 87 percent of the time, is yes. ~ Steven D Levitt, #NFDB
946:Experienced Christian, boast not in your experience; you will trip yet if you look away from him who is able to keep you from falling. Ye whose love is fervent, whose faith is constant, whose hopes are bright, say not, "We shall never sin," but rather cry, "Lead us not into temptation. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
947:I'd never understood how Carlisle was able to do that - ignore the blood of his patients in order to treat them. Wouldn't the constant temptation be so distracting, so dangerous? But now, I could see how, if you were focusing on something else hard enough, the temptation was be nothing at all. ~ Stephenie Meyer, #NFDB
948:Truth is, I don't know what Deacon wants anymore - it's not just physical. Whatever it is must scare him, though, and I'm the one who ends up getting hurt. So I make the concerted effort to resist his temptation, even if sometimes I'd like nothing more than to surround myself with his affection. ~ Suzanne Young, #NFDB
949:You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip. ~ W Somerset Maugham, #NFDB
950:All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide. Every one of them knows very well in some corner of his soul that suicide, though a way out, is rather a mean and shabby one, and that it is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one's own hand. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
951:The emphasis of that statement about my temptation to switch to the separatist side in Quebec was that someone who obviously loves Canada with everything he has, has been right here and fights for Canada all the time - for him to say something like that, something must be very wrong with Canada. ~ Justin Trudeau, #NFDB
952:It can be a great temptation to rest on the field and let the opponent have a play without making him pay for every inch. I must hold his pain where it is. Mine does not matter. ... The punishment I inflict, his fatigue, and that he is up against something that he does not comprehend is everything. ~ Jim Harbaugh, #NFDB
953:A line from The Picture of Dorian Gray kept running through my head- a line which, I thought, might have been written by the Devil himself:
"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. ~ Syrie James,#NFDB
954:Life Lessons 4:1 — Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The Holy Spirit led Jesus to a barren place where the devil waited to tempt Him. We should never doubt God’s leading just because we run into temptation. That is often God’s way of testing us. ~ Charles F Stanley, #NFDB
955:The issue is not the thing, but rather our approach to the thing. Same as with food. Our temptation is to objectify the problem, trying to locate sin in the stuff—in the tobacco, in the alcohol, in the gun, in the donut—instead of where sin is actually located, which is right under the breastbone. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
956:The Lord sometimes allows people who are devoted to Him to fall into such dreadful vices; and this is in order to prevent them from falling into a still greater sin-pride. Your temptation will pass and you will spend the remaining days of your life in humility. Only do not forget your sin. ~ Saint Seraphim of Sarov, #NFDB
957:...in any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
958:No husband comes in a perfect package. No husband can do it all. Your job as a wife is to fight to stay sensitive to your husband’s strengths. Resist the temptation to compare his weaknesses to another husband’s strengths, while forgetting your husband’s strengths and that other husband’s weaknesses. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
959:To appear to be on the inside and know more than others about what is going on is a great temptation for most people. It is a rare person who is willing to seem to know less than he does ... Somehow, people seem to feel that it is belittling to their importance not to know more than other people. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
960:6: 10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 6: 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 6: 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 6: 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
961:A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask...A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know? ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
962:Have you never seen a movie? Read a comic book? That's always how it starts - just a little temptation, just a little taste of evil, and then BAM, your light saber turns red and you're breathing through a big black mask and slicing off your son's hand just to be mean."
They looked at him blankly. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
963:I choose joy... I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical... the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
964:The Constitutional Convention debated whether America should even have a standing army. ... They worried that a powerful military could rival civilian government for power in our new country, and of course they worried that having a standing army around would create too much of a temptation to use it. ~ Rachel Maddow, #NFDB
965:In fact, the question has haunted me for a long time: Does life have meaning after Auschwitz? In a universe cursed because it is guilty, is hope still possible? For a young survivor whose knowledge of life and death surpasses that of his elders, wouldn’t suicide be as great a temptation as love or faith? ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
966:Our generation, like the one before us, must choose. Without the threat of the Cold War, without the pain of economic ruin, without the fresh memory of World War II's slaughter, it is tempting to pursue our private agendas -- to simply sit back and let history unfold. We must resist the temptation. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
967:Are we talking hell hounds and flames here?" Des asked, pacing at the end of our beds.
I repeated the question and gave a heaving sigh of relief when Jameson said I had the wrong idea.
"He's going to 'lead us into temptation.'"
"That doesn't sound so bad," Des said with a cheeky grin. ~ Terri Clark,#NFDB
968:The mainstream media may have trouble resisting the temptation to declare that Karl Rove has been demoted, but the truth is quite the contrary. By giving up his role as deputy White House chief of staff, Rove has been freed to do what he does best: shape big issues and develop strategies to win elections. ~ Fred Barnes, #NFDB
969: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, #NFDB
970:It’s the great temptation for small groups of people to slide into a state where they’re not quite telling each other the truth and they’re not quite celebrating each other. Instead, they tolerate each other, they accommodate each other, and they settle for sitting on the unspoken matters that separate them. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
971:It lent a Man a certain peace of mind... to ride through threats and terrors unhearing: it even lent a man a certain real protection, for he could not hear temptation and bad advice to be swayed by it, but it was no protection at all when power reached out with tangible results and brought down the lightning. ~ C J Cherryh, #NFDB
972:The temptation to level off [your giving] increases with each passing year. Pride tells you that you've sacrificed more than others. Fear tells you it's time to worry about the future. Friends say you've given enough, that it's someone else's turn now. But Jesus says to keep on, and you will see more of God. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
973: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, #NFDB
974:This is how the devil works with temptation—little compromises. King David committed adultery with Bathsheba, murdered Uriah, and lied to his people. And it began with a small, lingering, lustful look. We should pray, “Lord, lead me away from even the little things, because that’s how the big things start. ~ Doug Batchelor, #NFDB
975:Duncan's temper kindled, but it didn't dampen the lust seeping along his nerve endings. He could flatten this persnickety witch, or better yet, weave a love spell and bind her to him. Maybe he'd do just that and have done with things. He clasped his hands behind his back to quash the temptation to summon magic. ~ Ann Gimpel, #NFDB
976:Genocide is not just a murderous madness; it is, more deeply, a politics that promises a utopia beyond politics - one people, one land, one truth, the end of difference. Since genocide is a form of political utopia, it remains an enduring temptation in any multiethnic and multicultural society in crisis. ~ Michael Ignatieff, #NFDB
977:For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead — out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need — we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. ~ Rolf Potts, #NFDB
978:He looked really good. Pure temptation. He was so close. So warm. And probably still hard for her beneath the blankets and the sweatpants she could now see he wore.
“Marshal your thoughts, woman,” Aidan pleaded with a comical grimace. “You’re broadcasting, and this is getting a little uncomfortable. ~ Dianne Duvall,#NFDB
979:If this story has a soul, it is in the decisions made by its principal characters to resist the temptation of easy money and to pay special attention to the spirit in which they live their working lives. I didn’t write about them because they were controversial. I wrote about them because they were admirable. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
980:Speak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
981:Taking the money from drug operations and all that sort of stuff is something that goes past what most of us in society would expect a policeman should do. That temptation hits the police force at the same time as the temptation to take those drugs that are readily available hits the people on the streets. ~ Denzel Washington, #NFDB
982:To stand by yourself -- that was also part of dignity. That way, a person could get through a public flaying with dignity. Galileo. Luther. Even somebody who admitted his guilt and resisted the temptation to deny it. Something politicians couldn't do. Honesty, the courage for honesty. With others and yourself. ~ Pascal Mercier, #NFDB
983:Prayer: Lord, I praise you—though with fear and trembling—that you are the judge of all the earth. Deliver me from the temptation to want to sit in judgment on certain people. I cannot see into anyone’s heart or into their past enough to know what they deserve. Help me put these matters into your hands. Amen. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
984:Here in the dark, dusty corners of my mind I feel a strange relief. I am always welcome here in my loneliness, in my sadness in this abyss, there is a rhythm I remember. The steady drop of tears, the temptation to retreat, the shadow of my past the life I choose to forget has not
will never
ever
forget me ~ Tahereh Mafi,#NFDB
985:Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
986:The snake pulled back the curtain to the throne room and invited Eve to take a seat. Put on the crown. Pick up the scepter. Put on the cape. See how it feels to have power. See how feels to have a name. See how it feels to be in control! Eve swallowed the hook. The temptation to be like God eclipsed her view of God. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
987:Roman Catholicism was not Christianity; you asserted that Rome proclaimed Christ subject to the third temptation of the devil. Announcing to all the world that Christ without an earthly kingdom cannot hold his ground upon earth, Catholicism by so doing proclaimed Antichrist and ruined the whole Western world. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
988:Those who are faithful to God are protected and prospered. That comes as the result of serving God and keeping His commandments. But with those blessings comes the temptation to forget their source. It is easy to begin to feel the blessings were granted not by a loving God on whom we depend but by our own powers. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
989:In diplomacy there are two kinds of problems: small ones and large ones. The small ones will go away by themselves and the large ones you will not be able to do anything about. The biggest challenges in your career will come from the temptation to act. The test of your mettle will be how nobly you surmount it. ~ Patrick McGuinness, #NFDB
990:To deny the darkness of yourself is to deny half of who you are, and when you love, truly love, you need to love the whole person; not just the part that smiles and waves, but the part that thinks murderous thoughts and knows that pain is both pleasure and temptation...but still thinks puppies are really cute. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
991:A temptation is the universe's gracious way of allowing a soul to evolve without creating negative karma. In other words, a temptation is like a magnet that draws to awareness, negativity, that would otherwise create negative karma if it remained unconscious. A temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic act. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
992:The clearest sensation that a human being has when he experiences the holy is an overpowering and overwhelming sense of creatureliness. That is, when we are in the presence of God, we are humbled and become most aware of ourselves as creatures. This is the opposite of Satan's original temptation, "You shall be as gods. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
993:The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
994:9But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
995:(Family rumor has it that he was originally cloistered off - that is relieved of his duties as a secular priest in Astoria - to free him of a persistent temptation to administer the sacramental wafer to his parishioners' lips by standing back two or three feet and trajecting it in a lovely arc over his left shoulder.) ~ J D Salinger, #NFDB
996:Good and evil exist in all of us.
a moment’s temptation takes us on a wrong path.
On that path may lurk foul fiends,
inhuman, yet feeding, needing
all our weaknesses: vanity, indolence and envy,
Easy fruits for evil appetites,
our flesh, a tasty afterthought,
our bones flung asunder. ~ Emmanuelle de Maupassant,#NFDB
997:It is better to know several basic rules of life than to study many unnecessary sciences. The major rules of life will stop you from evil and show you the good path in life; but the knowledge of many unnecessary sciences may lead you into the temptation of pride, and stop you from understanding the basic rules of life. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
998:Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
999:economic accomplishment, not to mention personal fulfillment, more often swings on a different hinge. It depends not on keeping our nature submerged but on allowing it to surface. It requires resisting the temptation to control people—and instead doing everything we can to reawaken their deep-seated sense of autonomy. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
1000:I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons entrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition. ~ Alexander Hamilton, #NFDB
1001:The great temptation of our lives is to deny our role as chosen people and to allow ourselves to be trapped in the worries of our daily lives. Without the word that keeps lifting us up as God's chosen people, we remain, or become, small people, stuck in the complaints that emerge from our daily struggle to survive. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1002:9‘This, then, is how you should pray: ‘ “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation,a but deliver us from the evil one.b ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1003:Every temptation that is resisted, every evil thought that is curbed, every desire that is subdued, every bitter word that is withheld, every noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sublime thought that is cultivated, adds to the development of will-force, good character, and attainment of eternal bliss and immortality. ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
1004:I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves. ~ David Sedaris, #NFDB
1005:They're all so highly educated, you know. Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready-made and all from the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the lives of your betters. It makes you wise in some ways, but it can make you a blindfolded fool in others. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
1006:We haven’t talked since the café, and he’s dead wrong if he thinks I’m caving. I don’t care how many wicked smiles he flashes in my direction or how many times he “mistakenly” brushes his hand against my cheek or thigh. He can make my head spin and my blood run hot, but I’m strong enough to resist his every temptation. ~ Katie McGarry, #NFDB
1007:when our inner selves convert distinctions into a perceived right to diminish others, we are not on a holy path. We are submitting to the mighty enticements of the third temptation, and we are serving the tempter. God, whom we seek and serve, does not devalue our differences. God holds us all as equally beloved. ~ Alexander John Shaia, #NFDB
1008:With each temptation, Jesus, without hesitation, quoted Scripture that refuted Satan’s temptation. Truth is powerful. The more saturated we are with truth, the more powerful we’ll be in resisting our temptations. And the more we’ll naturally direct our cravings where they should be directed—to the Author of all truth. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
1009:At its most basic level, behind the grand poetry and superb characterizations, Shakespeare shows Macbeth succumbing to the temptation of pride, the same sin as Adam. Both wanted to live without God, to lead their own lives, follow their own paths, and ignore any limits on their freedom imposed by God’s strictures. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1010:I cannot stay, Empress. You are too much temptation, and I am nowhere near strong or good enough to resist you." He spoke the words quietly at her ear, his nose buried in her hair- hair he no longer considered brown, but a rich myriad of chocolate and mahogany and sable that was fast becoming his favorite of all colors. ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB
1011:I cannot stay, Empress. You are too much temptation, and I am nowhere near strong or good enough to resist you." He spoke the words quietly at her ear, his nose buried in her hair- hair he no longer considered brown, nut a rich myriad of chocolate and mahogany and sable that was fast becoming his favorite of all colors. ~ Sarah MacLean, #NFDB
1012:If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: "God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled." When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1013:Man has a body that is both his burden and his temptation. He drags it along and gives in to it. “He ought to watch over it, keep it in bounds, repress it, and obey it only as a last resort. It may be wrong to obey even then, but if so, the fault is venial. It is a fall, but a fall onto the knees, which may end in prayer. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1014:The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution; who resists to sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering. ~ Seneca the Younger, #NFDB
1015:A good communist,” the man had said, “does not let go of the plough halfway across the paddy and leave the buffalo to find its own direction. He eats with her, tends to her injuries, and sleeps with her until the job is done.” Siri had resisted the temptation to spread the word that the Party was advocating bestiality. ~ Colin Cotterill, #NFDB
1016:Because self-control requires energy, which means we have less energy available for the next thing we need to do. And that’s why resisting temptation, making hard decisions, or taking initiative all seem to draw from the same well of energy. So willpower isn’t something that we just exercise – it’s something we deplete. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
1017:God has great plans for you, directed towards helping you do what Jesus Christ did when He was on earth. This requires you do resist temptation vigorously, with special confidence in the assistance of His Divine Goodness. Courage then, Monsieur. Be faithful to Him, and the Divine Goodness will be favorable to you. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
1018:Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
1019:The best way to resist the temptation to give up when times are hard is to pray that you won’t give in to the temptation. It’s wiser and more effective to pray and ask for God’s help as you stand against temptation than to try to exert willpower alone. Work with God, and pray you won’t surrender to the temptation to give up. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1020:There is so much temptation to hold on to my career even more now. To try to micromanage and dictate every little aspect. But that's not how I want to do things anymore. I'm thinking about how can I trust God more. How can I surrender more? How can I bring him more glory? It's a fight. But it's one I'm going to keep fighting. ~ Jeremy Lin, #NFDB
1021:To day if ye will hear his voice, 8. Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9. When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. 10. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1022:Do not grieve over the temptations you suffer. When the Lord intends to bestow a particular virtue on us, He often permits us first to be tempted by the opposite vice. Therefore, look upon every temptation as an invitation to grow in a particular virtue and a promise by God that you will be successful, if only you stand fast. ~ Philip Neri, #NFDB
1023:g “Our Father in heaven, h hallowed be i your name. [1] 10 j Your kingdom come, k your will be done, [2] l on earth as it is in heaven. 11 m Give us n this day our daily bread, [3] 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And o lead us not into temptation, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1024:Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, #NFDB
1025:As much as you feel as though you need to find some relevant bit of information for your story to work, research distracts from your writing and inevitably leads you down a rabbit hole of websites and articles and, more than likely, the temptation of checking your email or your Facebook profile or the baseball scores on ESPN. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1026:The 'bath' was almost the size of a small swimming pool, the steam curling off it pure, sensual temptation. A shower stood to her right, but it had no glass walls, the area defined only by an expanse of gold-flecked tile. A lightbulb went off in her head. 'Wings,' she whispered. 'It’s all to accommodate those beautiful wings. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
1027:I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep picking ourselves up each time...The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give up. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1028:I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
1029:I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote. ~ Ian Mcewan, #NFDB
1030:The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of deep religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone's freedom is at risk. ~ Edward Kennedy, #NFDB
1031:We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out,—and having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. ~ Timothy VI.7, #NFDB
1032:If America and the Western world continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it is predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems - overpopulation, boredom, and hunger - since it would do away with all life. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
1033:The temptation to customize a building around a new technology is always enormous, and it is nearly always unnecessary. Technology is relatively lightweight and flexible—more so every decade. Let the technology adapt to the building rather than vice versa, and then you’re not pushed around when the next technology comes along. ~ Stewart Brand, #NFDB
1034:Don’t sign on for more problems than you must. Resist the temptation to involve yourself in other people’s zones of expertise and responsibility. Monitor troublesome situations if you need to, but don’t insert yourself unless you’re running out of time and a solution is nowhere in sight. In short, stifle your inner control freak. ~ Twyla Tharp, #NFDB
1035:Most investors are pretty smart. Yet most investors also remain heavily invested in actively managed stock funds. This is puzzling. The temptation, of course, is to dismiss these folks as ignorant fools. But I suspect these folks know the odds are stacked against them, and yet they are more than happy to take their chances. ~ Jonathan Clements, #NFDB
1036:Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1037:This next sentence is one of the most important spiritual truths you will ever learn: God develops the fruit of the Spirit in your life by allowing you to experience circumstances in which you’re tempted to express the exact opposite quality! Character development always involves a choice, and temptation provides that opportunity. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
1038:We need to come up with enlightened ways of making trial and error effective through the use of controlled trials and the like, and be more willing to iterate our way to success. As situations become more complex we will have to avoid the temptation to impose untested solutions from above and try to discover the world from below. ~ Matthew Syed, #NFDB
1039:Mindfulness is the willingness to rest in that natural state of awareness, resisting the temptation to judge whatever emotion comes up, and therefore neither opposing or getting carried away with a feeling. Meditation is simply the exercise that is going to give you the best conditions to practice being mindful of these emotions. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
1040:of being linked with each other, we have every temptation to be selfish and unmoved by others and by their plight. Our towns, our cities, our places become no more than hotels, with all that lack of intimacy that is a feature of hotels – strangers under one roof, no more. Well, we should not be strangers to one another. We ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
1041:To believe that He will preserve us is, indeed, a means of preservation. God will certainly preserve us, and make a way of escape for us out of the temptation, should we fall. We are to pray for what God has already promised. Our requests are to be regulated by His promises and commands. Faith embraces the promises and so finds relief. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1042:You can’t claim to be good if you have never been tempted to be bad. You can’t claim to be faithful if you have never had the opportunity to be unfaithful. Integrity is built by defeating the temptation to be dishonest; humility grows when we refuse to be prideful; and endurance develops every time you reject the temptation to give up. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1043:Life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns, love and loss. And life would not be worth experiencing if it weren't just that. You can't have the good without the bad, you need to somehow learn to accept the bad and adjust it in a way that you can endure and overcome. -Alexis Summers in Fulfillment (Book 3 in The Temptation series) ~ K M Golland, #NFDB
1044:Lily, I can honestly tell you that i have never in my long life come across a creature as beguilinig as you. You are as fresh and as lovely as a budding flower by the dew of a golden morning. I breathe you in and am filled with the taste of sunshine, life, and hope. You are much more than beautiful. You are...temptation personified. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1045:To say it again: it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1046:Your road is everything that a road ought to be...and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen path and explore them. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1047:To say it again: it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1048:And this time
with ardent lips so lightly grazing
he kissed her trembling mouth, and then
answered her pleas, in language dazing
with sweet temptation; once again
those mighty eyes were fixed and gazing
deep into hers. He set her blazing.
He gleamed above her like a spark
or like a knife that finds its mark. ~ Mikhail Lermontov,#NFDB
1049:Every subsequent moral crisis of my life, moreover, has had precisely the pattern of this struggle over the first Communion, I have battled, usually without avail, against a temptation to do something which only I knew was bad, being swept on by a need to preserve outward appearances and to live up to other people's expectations of me. ~ Mary McCarthy, #NFDB
1050:Where faith is not continually kept in motion and exercised, it weakens and decreases, so that it must indeed vanish; and yet we do not see nor feel this weakness ourselves, except in times of need and temptation, when unbelief rages too strongly; and yet for that very reason faith must have temptations in which it may battle and grow. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1051:Asleep he’d been more of a temptation than she wanted. He’d looked relaxed and gentle.
Inviting.
Awake he looked dangerous.
And still inviting.
She would give the goddess credit, Artemis had exquisite taste in men; and to Tabitha’s knowledge, and according to Amanda’s words, there was no such thing as an ugly Dark-Hunter. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1052:Curiously we did it all over again when we made the Live At Pompeii film, this time using another dog, called Mademoiselle Nobs. On the positive side, even when hard pressed, at least we resisted the temptation to construct an entire album of barking dogs, and to audition a clutch of session dogs desperate to make it in the music business. ~ Nick Mason, #NFDB
1053: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, #NFDB
1054:Never do anything which you know perfectly well is going to be the means of temptation to you. If you know that certain things, which may not be bad in and of themselves, generally get you down and you are a worse person afterwards than you were before, do not do them; never, as it were, provide yourself with the occasion to sin. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
1055:The State is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its immediate sphere. Beyond the limits of things necessary for its well-being, it can only give indirect help to fight the battle of life by promoting the influences which prevail against temptation--religion, education, and the distribution of wealth. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
1056:A “FAITH” that merely confirms us in opinionatedness and self-complacency may well be an expression of theological doubt. True faith is never merely a source of spiritual comfort. It may indeed bring peace, but before it does so it must involve us in struggle. A “faith” that avoids this struggle is really a temptation against true faith. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1057:Anyone who is interested in the psychology of children will have observed that whereas one child will resist temptation or seduction, another will easily yield to it. There are children who will hardly oppose any resistance to the invitation of an unknown person to follow him; others who react in an opposite way in the same circumstances. ~ Karl Abraham, #NFDB
1058:The temptation many creative people I know have is to strive for popularity. To make, do, and say things that other people like in the hopes of pleasing them. This motivation is nice. And sometimes the end result is good. But often what happens in trying so hard to please other people, especially many other people, the result is mediocre. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
1059:O Lord our God, if during this day I have sinned, whether in word or deed or thought, forgive me all, for You are good and love mankind. Grant me peaceful and undisturbed sleep, and deliver me from all influence and temptation of the evil one. Raise me up again in proper time that I may glorify You; for You are blessed with Your Only-begotten ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1060:To those who feared oppressive taxes, Hamilton made an argument that anticipated “supply-side economics” of the late twentieth century, saying that officials “can have no temptation to abuse this power, because the motive of revenue will check its own extremes. Experience has shown that moderate duties are more productive than high ones.”10 ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1061:If you are committed to the change, you're going to have to sideline the skeptics, or at least keep them under control. There may be a temptation to move them out but skeptics have a value - flagging weaknesses in the plan. Ideally, you will enlist their critical stance by challenging them to find ways to improve the plan as you go forward. ~ Gary A Klein, #NFDB
1062:Recognise instant self-gratification for what it is. Resist the temptation to grab for material objects like the perfect house, the coolest clothes or the hottest car. The if I just had X, I would be happy syndrome is a mass delusion. When you look for happiness in mere objects, they are never enough. Look around. Look within. ~ Nick Vujicic, #NFDB
1063:as she bestowed her heavy censure alike on his virtues as his errors, on his devoted friendship and his ill-bestowed loves, on his disinterestedness and his prodigality, on his pre-possessing grace of manner, and the facility with which he yielded to temptation, her double shot proved too heavy, and fell short of the mark. Nor ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, #NFDB
1064:Believers do not surrender. They can continue on their way to the truth because they are certain that God has created them "explorers", whose mission is to leave no stone unturned, though the temptation to doubt is always there. Leaning on God, they continue to reach out, always and everywhere, for all that is beautiful, good, and true. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1065:Choice is bondage, choicelessness freedom. The moment you choose something, you have fallen in the trap of the world. If you can resist the temptation to choose, if you can remain choicelessly aware, the trap disappears on its own accord, because when you don`t choose you don`t help the trap to be there - the trap is also created by your choice. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
1066:mean, if Jesus was vulnerable to temptation, the rest of us certainly are, whether it be temptation to self-loathing or self-aggrandizement, depression or pride, self-destruction or self-indulgence. We are tempted to doubt our innate value precisely to the degree that we are insecure about our identity from, and our relationship to, God. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1067:No such thing as a temptation. A temptation is a desire, a lust like any other - but one that we regret afterwards + wish undone (or that we know beforehand we will regret after). So it`s no excuse to say, ``I didn`t mean to do it. I was tempted + I couldn`t resist.`` All one can honestly say is, ``I did it. I`m sorry I did it.``
- Reborn ~ Susan Sontag,#NFDB
1068:And in that moment, I saw the horizon unbounded and I reeled with the vastness of it. What new shores would I discover if I could only travel those few inches? A storm—a tempest in the pit of my stomach—but I was the skiff tossed on the waves, and my father’s lesson like thunder in my ears: don’t get too close. Still, the temptation was there. ~ Heidi Heilig, #NFDB
1069:I resisted the temptation to turn around and stick out my tongue in derision at Beliquose. After all, there was no telling when or if we should meet again, and I certainly did not need him saying, 'Ah yes, Poe, the fellow whose trespasses i could have forgiven in their entirety... except for the tongue thing. Yes, for that, you must surely die. ~ Peter David, #NFDB
1070:Lily, I can honestly tell you that I have never in my long life come across a creature as beguiling as you. You are as fresh and as lovely as a budding flower kissed by the dew of a golden morning. I breathe you in and am filled with the taste of sunshine, life, and hope. You are much more than beautiful. You... are... temptation personified. ~ Colleen Houck, #NFDB
1071:One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power—political power, military power, economic power, or moral and spiritual power—even though they continued to speak in the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but emptied himself and became as we are. ~ David A Livermore, #NFDB
1072:When, therefore, spiritual comfort is given by God, receive it with giving of thanks, and know that it is the gift of God, not thy desert. Be not lifted up, rejoice not overmuch nor foolishly presume, but rather be more humble for the gift, more wary and more careful in all thy doings; for that hour will pass away, and temptation will follow. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
1073:I resisted the temptation to turn around and stick out my tongue in derision at Beliquose. After all, there was no telling when or if we should meet again, and I certainly did not need him saying, 'Ah yes, Poe, the fellow whose trespasses i could have forgiven in their entirety... except for the tongue thing. Yes, for that, you must surely die.' ~ Peter David, #NFDB
1074:...Sometimes her curiosity got the better of her and she found herself furtively asking questions about his life before Grange Hall, pretending as she did so that she wasn't really that interested. The truth was that Peter was a window through which Anna could glimpse the world outside, and the temptation to keep looking was quite overwhelming. ~ Gemma Malley, #NFDB
1075:Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension. ~ Horace Mann, #NFDB
1076:How concrete everything becomes in the world of the spirit when an object, a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, desire, security, welcome and respect. If one were to give an account of all the doors one has closed and opened, of all the doors one would like to re-open, one would have to tell the story of one's entire life. ~ Gaston Bachelard, #NFDB
1077:It was fortunate that I had not already yielded to the temptation to break with Albertine; the tedium of having to rejoin her presently, when I went home, was a trifling matter compared with the anxiety that I should have felt if the separation had occurred when I still had a doubt about her and before I had had time to grow indifferent to her. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
1078:How many of us would be able to overcome our desires and resist the temptation of sin? How many of us even lower our gaze when we look upon something that we are not supposed to? The real prisoner is the one whose heart has been kept away from remembering his Lord, and the real captive is the one who has been captivated by his whims and desires. ~ Ibn Taymiyyah, #NFDB
1079:Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love! ~ Philip Roth, #NFDB
1080:The pursuit of a mature life, a life that can bear the weight of image bearing, is in many ways the continual accumulating of more and more secret disciplines, until we are fully formed in the image of the one who confronted every temptation, every opportunity for the misuse of power, and always and only bore the true image in the midst of it all. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
1081:Silverman also contends that a baby’s demands on the mother can be “very flattering to the mother’s narcissism, since it attributes to her the capacity to satisfy her infant’s lack, and so—by extension—her own. Since most women in our culture are egoically wounded, the temptation to bathe in the sun of this idealization often proves irresistible. ~ Maggie Nelson, #NFDB
1082:Temptation—for the entire human race, for the people of Israel, and for each of us personally—starts with a question of identity, moves to a confusion of the desires, and ultimately heads to a contest of futures. In short, there’s a reason you want what you don’t want to want. Temptation is embryonic, personality specific, and purpose directed. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
1083:Then faith's paradox is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual determines his relation to the universal through his relation to God, not his relation to God through his relation through the universal... Unless this is how it is, faith has no place in existence; and faith is then a temptation. ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1084:The temptation to touch each other, even to bash their shopping carts together, was removed from them, and they all settled into being the kind of friends many old friends become: that is, they were friends when they heard from each other – or when, occasionally, they got together. And when they were not in touch, they did not think of one another. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
1085:Lord, give me the capacity of never praying, spare me the insanity of all worship, let this temptation of love pass from me which would deliver me forever unto You. Let the void spread between my heart and heaven! I have no desire to people my deserts by Your presence, to tyrannize my nights by Your light, to dissolve my Siberias beneath Your sun. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
1086:Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
1087:The great temptation of Big Data is that we can stop worrying about comprehension and focus on preventive action instead. Instead of wasting precious public resources on understanding the 'why' - i.e., exploring the reasons as to why terrorists become terrorists - one can focus on predicting the 'when' so that a timely intervention could be made. ~ Evgeny Morozov, #NFDB
1088:Women have traditionally been either put on pedestals or damned as the source of all sexual temptation and sin. These are two sides of the same coin, since both place women in a nonhuman role. Playboy has opposed these warped sexual values and, in so doing, helped women step down from their pedestals and enjoy their natural sexuality as much as men. ~ Hugh Hefner, #NFDB
1089:That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re irresistible.” “I am not.” “I’m not happy about it. You really are the most irritating person I’ve ever met. I’d managed to avoid any women of any temptation whatsoever for four years—a very easy task in Pembrook Park. Things were going splendidly, I was right on track to die alone and unnoticed. And then … ~ Shannon Hale, #NFDB
1090:Because so much of horror is destabilisation—and often destabilisation come from an outside source (an alien invasion, a horrible plague…)—there is a temptation to think that destabilisation is the story all through. That civilisation collapses, that transformations are inevitable. But the response to destabilisation is frequently a matter of choice. ~ Octavia Cade, #NFDB
1091:Choice—to do and think right Refusal—of temptation Yearning—to be better Repulsion—of negativity, of bad influences, of what isn’t true Preparation—for what lies ahead or whatever may happen Purpose—our guiding principle and highest priority Assent—to be free of deception about what’s inside and outside our control (and be ready to accept the latter) ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
1092:And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1093:This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero! ~ Sivananda, #NFDB
1094:Why do they do this? Because it gives them a license to act like tyrants and to feel like saints. “Do what I tell you!” roars the tyrant. “It’s for your own good, and one day you’ll be grateful,” says the saint. Few people, feeling themselves powerless in a world turned upside down, can or even wish to resist the temptation to play this benevolent despot. ~ John Holt, #NFDB
1095:Many flatter themselves and consider themselves to be good, humble, and meek, but they will discover the contrary under temptation. Do not not become despondent in temptations, then, but give all the more thanks to God that He thus brings you to what is hidden in your heart - the knowledge of yourself - and wishes you to be corrected and be saved. ~ Tikhon of Zadonsk, #NFDB
1096:Prayer is often a temptation to bank on a miracle of God instead of on a moral issue, i.e., it is much easier to ask God to do my work than it is to do it myself. Until we are disciplined properly, we will always be inclined to bank on God's miracles and refuse to do the moral thing ourselves. It is our job, and it will never be done unless we do it. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
1097:But he does not enter into temptation if he conquers his evil concupiscence by good will. And yet the determination of the human will is insufficient, unless the Lord grant it victory in answer to prayer that it enter not into temptation. What, indeed, affords clearer evidence of the grace of God than the acceptance of prayer in any petition? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1098:If you’re losing the battle against a persistent bad habit, an addiction, or a temptation, and you’re stuck in a repeating cycle of good intention-failure-guilt, you will not get better on your own! You need the help of other people. Some temptations are only overcome with the help of a partner who prays for you, encourages you, and holds you accountable. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
1099:I'm just looking forward to doing these videos with AXE. Doing more directing, collaborating with them, finding ways to kind of like tap into temptation with their market and their audience and mine and find cool, creative ways to get the brand out to people. And I think they're doing a really, really good job. So we've got some cool stuff coming up. ~ Michael B Jordan, #NFDB
1100:will not occur overnight. But it will occur soon—in but two or three generations, a time not much further removed from ours today than the founding of Israel 50 years ago. V. ISRAELI EXCEPTIONALISM Israel is different. In Israel the great temptation of modernity—assimilation—simply does not exist. Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: ~ Charles Krauthammer, #NFDB
1101:Christianity has taken the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all the self preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1102:I felt an unrelenting restlessness. It was the first time I had ever experienced jealousy, and that emotion clung to my skin day and night like a dark stain, a contamination I could not shed; it became so unbearable that when finally I rid myself of it, I was freed forever of the desire to possess another person or the temptation ever to belong to anyone. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
1103:Any dedicated moon-watcher will know that, regardless of the year, I have taken a good many liberties with the lunar cycle-usually to take advantage of days (Valentine's, July 4th, etc.) which "mark" certain months in our minds. To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1104:Obviously, the core of Eve’s temptation was she wanted to be like God, knowing good and evil. But we can’t ignore the fact that the serpent used food as a tool in the process. If the very downfall of humanity was caused when Eve surrendered to a temptation to eat something she wasn’t supposed to eat, I do think our struggles with food are important to God. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
1105:see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1106:There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1107:Yet few are as deep-rooted and damaging as the habitual tendency to view the sensuous earth as a subordinate space—whether as a sinful plane, riddled with temptation, needing to be transcended and left behind; or a menacing region needing to be beaten and bent to our will; or simply a vaguely disturbing dimension to be avoided, superseded, and explained away. ~ David Abram, #NFDB
1108:There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus. ~ Annie Dillard, #NFDB
1109:May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1110:The best way to show your gratitude to God and people is to accept everything with joy....We may not be able to give much but we can always give the joy that springs from a heart that is in love with God. All over the world people are hungry and thirsty for God's love. We meet that hunger by spreading joy. Joy is one of the best safeguards against temptation. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
1111:Body parts that unfortunately found themselves on the wrong side of the rift may seem to remain attached. Intense GLAAMR and general disorientation may hide their misshapen form. Many victims will be unwilling to believe in the reality of what has happened to them. The temptation may be strong to leave these attached and hope for the best. Don’t do it! Think ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
1112:How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No, there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to him; a constant looking to him for grace. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
1113:Our Father in heaven, h hallowed be i your name. [1] 10 j Your kingdom come, k your will be done, [2] l on earth as it is in heaven. 11 m Give us n this day our daily bread, [3] 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And o lead us not into temptation, but p deliver us from q evil. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1114:This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything. There is a lesson in each experience. Learn it and become wise. Every failure is a stepping stone to success. Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith. Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength. Therefore nil desperandum. March forward hero! ~ Sivananda Saraswati, #NFDB
1115:Every dictator or even demagogue—almost every film-star or crooner—can now draw tens of thousands of the human sheep with him. They give themselves (what there is of them) to him; in him, to us. There may come a time when we shall have no need to bother about individual temptation at all, except for the few. Catch the bell-wether and his whole flock comes after him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1116:Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
1117:The temptation of Christ was harder, unspeakably harder, than the temptation of Adam; for Adam carried nothing in himself which could have given the tempter a claim and power over him. But Christ bore in himself the whole burden of the flesh, under the curse, under condemnation; and yet his temptation was henceforth to bring help and salvation to all flesh. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1118:I never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and mercy, as I saw after this temptation; great sins to draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty. When Job had passed through his captivity, he had twice as much as he had before. Job xlii. 10. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1119:ridding the body of the demon does not completely sever the ties between the host and the demon. Once the demon has consumed you, it is easier to return to that dark place. It is likened to being a recovering alcoholic. Every day you must resist the temptation toward anger, rage, bitterness, hate…all these things can actually feel good. Every day is another victory. ~ Hanna Peach, #NFDB
1120:Thus you see having committed a Crime once, is a sad Handle to the committing of it again; whereas all the Regret, and Reflections wear off when the Temptation renews it self; had I not yielded to see him again, the Corrupt desire in him had worn off, and 'tis very probable he had never fallen into it, with any Body else, as I really believe he had not done before. ~ Daniel Defoe, #NFDB
1121:Daily I walk a high wire, always in danger of losing my balance. The essence of my life is supernatural, which I must respect if I am to make the best use of my gift. Yet I live in the rational world and am subject to its laws. The temptation is to be guided entirely by impulses of an otherworldly origin-but in this world a long fall will always end in a hard impact. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
1122:I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. Those ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1123:Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1124:The besetting sin of able men is impatience of contradiction and of criticism. Even those who do their best to resist the temptation, yield to it almost unconsciously and become the tools of toadies and flatterers. "Authorities," "disciples," and "schools" are the curse of science and do more to interfere with the work of the scientific spirit than all its enemies. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
1125:Focusing on your strengths is required for peak performance, but improving your weaknesses has the potential for the greatest gains. This is true for athletes, executives, and entire companies. Leaving your comfort zone involves risk, however, and when you are already doing well the temptation to stick with the status quo can be overwhelming, leading to stagnation. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
1126:I wrote Normal Life using concepts that have been helpful to me, and hoping to offer those as accessible tools for thinking differently about the pitfalls trans resistance faces, in particular the temptation to focus on legal equality and the limitations of that approach, and the alternative approaches being taken by racial and economic justice focused trans activists. ~ Dean Spade, #NFDB
1127:It's all in your past. Whatever you once were, you don't have to be that person anymore. AFter the reminder, he'd realized that if he wanted to change, he couldn't hide from every temptation. If he sheltered himself from danger, he'd never have the chance to grow stronger. Strength came from facing the temptation, looking it in the face, and then walking away from it. ~ Jody Hedlund, #NFDB
1128:Damn it, he’s not my boyfriend!”
“Boyfriend. Fiancé. Sugar daddy. Whatever.”
“He’s none of those things.”
Trace jerked back around. “Please enlighten me then. What
the hell is he?”
“My past.”
“And what am I?”
I swallowed and stared intently at him with a nakedness I
couldn’t hide. “You’re…my everything.” Trace and Shannon from "Within Temptation ~ Tanya Holmes,#NFDB
1129:Foreshadow, plot buster or red herring... only time will tell: P69 -- Cassie waited; in the evening light through the window her eyes looked huge, opaque and watchful. I knew she was giving me a chance to say, Fuck the hair clip, let’s forget we ever found it. Even now the temptation, tired and profitless though it may be, is to wonder what would have happened if I had. ~ Tana French, #NFDB
1130:The concept of emotional or spiritual survival has an honorable history, but it does invite self-indulgence. In my own case, the worst I ever survived was severe personal and political confusion, the temptation to various sorts of craziness and a couple of bad acid trips. It felt pretty horrendous at the time, and some of it was even dangerous, but Auschwitz it wasn't. ~ Ellen Willis, #NFDB
1131:Had (I) been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort ~ Booker T Washington, #NFDB
1132:The objective is self-imposed ghettoization. Distinct language and dress keep interactions with outsiders to a minimum and help maintain separation from the wider world. Restrictions on secular education and outside knowledge keep foreign ideas at bay. Bans on media and popular entertainment keep away temptation. And so the Hasidim are spared the calamities of modernity. ~ Shulem Deen, #NFDB
1133:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1134:two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the gate to search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known to yield to the temptation of smuggling, and in the same way: that is to say, by concealing the smuggled property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So Sanctity and Beauty may, by no means, enter. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
1135:Coming to our senses involves cultivating an overarching awareness of all our senses, including our own minds, and their limitations, including the temptation when we feel deeply insecure and have a lot of resources, to try to control as rigidly and as tightly as possible all variables in the external world, an impossible and ultimately depleting, intrinsically violent, ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1136:Out of the temptation of Hate, and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled by Sacrifice against Humiliation, . . . He bent to all the gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination with that rare courtesy which is the armor of pure souls. . . . he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the old, helping the weak, guiding the strong. ~ W E B Du Bois, #NFDB
1137:Prayer gives us strength for great ideals, for keeping up our faith, charity, purity, generosity; prayer gives us strength to rise up from indifference and guilt, if we have had the misfortune to give in to temptation and weakness. Prayer gives us light by which to see and to judge from God's perspective and from eternity. That is why you must not give up on praying! ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1138:Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand. ~ Aldous Huxley, #NFDB
1139:Oh, they told me everything. About their families and crops, their animals, their failures and triumphs, the weather, their first time with a woman, how many shekels or denarii their neighbors still owed them or they owed their neighbors. What a blessing it was when a cloud crossed the sun. They talked about weakness and temptation and evil. And they talked about their hopes. ~ Jeff Long, #NFDB
1140:A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation. ~ John Locke, #NFDB
1141:Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies - for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry - I say to myself, "What a pity I can't buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
1142:ALQUIST: Yes, just like Nana. Does Nana ever pray? HELENA: She never stops. ALQUIST: Does she have prayers for the different things that can happen in a life; prayers against hard times, prayers against illness? HELENA: Prayers against temptation, prayers against floods, . . . ALQUIST: No prayers against progress though, eh? HELENA: No, I don’t think so. ALQUIST: That’s a pity. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1143:I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. … The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius. ~ Sam Shepard, #NFDB
1144:What did I key into the sat-nav system of my life [where do I want to be 10, 20 years from now]? What is my ultimate destination? You have to look at that every time you feel overwhelmed. Remembering that destination will help you make the single most important distinction in life, which is to distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1145:It’s inevitable-as agents of change, magi transform themselves and their world simply by existing. A callow apprentice becomes a cocky sorcerer in a blink of the Devil’s eye; in time, he might ascent to the Zenith or Fall into the thorns of temptation and sin. The Path he walks will follow him, and the echoes of his passing will linger for years, decades, or centuries to come. ~ Phil Brucato, #NFDB
1146:When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
1147:Amy talks about the temptation of being the woman a man wants, but ultimately she doesn’t give in to the temptation to be “the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain.” Unlikable women refuse to give in to that temptation. They are, instead, themselves. They accept the consequences of their choices, and those consequences become stories worth reading. ~ Roxane Gay, #NFDB
1148:if we continue with what is surely our greatest Western temptation, and think that in some way history owes us a solution, that we can, by pursuing our own most parochial self-interest, achieve in some miraculous way a consummation of world order, then we are heading not simply towards great disappointments, but towards disaster and tragedy as well. ~ Barbara Ward Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, #NFDB
1149:I must endure, fighting the temptation simply to become slack-jawed like most of my school 'peers' (they wish!), who will themselves into a collective, vacant, trancelike state for the duration of each class. (Although I sometimes secretly envy their ability to empty their minds completely for a full fifty minutes, reanimating only at the sound of a bell, like Pavlov's dogs...) ~ Beth Fantaskey, #NFDB
1150:She turned away in dismissal, only to have him grab her hand and whirl her around again. Before her startled gasp died, his mouth was on hers, his fingers buried in her hair. [...]
He tasted like nothing she’d ever tasted before. Like dark fantasy. Like the sweetest temptation imaginable. And his scent! He smelled of cool night air and warm leather jacket and heated male skin. ~ Norah Wilson,#NFDB
1151:The protection of a ten-year-old girl from her father's advances is a necessary condition of social order, but the protection of the father from temptation is a necessary condition of his continued social adjustment. The protections that are built up in the child against desire for the parent become the essential counterpart to the attitudes in the parent that protect the child. ~ Margaret Mead, #NFDB
1152:as though frustration were an unbearable form of self-doubt, a state in which we can so little tolerate not knowing what we want, not knowing whether it is available, and not having it that we fabricate certainties to fill the void (we fill in the gaps with states of conviction). The frustration is itself a temptation scene, one in which we must invent something to be tempted by. ~ Adam Phillips, #NFDB
1153:Preschoolers sound much brighter and more knowledgeable than they really are, which is why so many parents and grandparents are sosure their progeny are gifted and super-bright. Because children's questions sound so mature and sophisticated, we are tempted to answer them at a level of abstraction far beyond the child's level of comprehension. That is a temptation we should resist. ~ David Elkind, #NFDB
1154:The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets. ~ James Madison, #NFDB
1155:What Clint Eastwood meant was when you are directing and starring in a film, there's a temptation to spend more time on the other actors' performances, and then when you get to your own work, you kind of go, "Oh, yeah, well, let's cut that." And he said, "Take your time and make sure you do your work right." It's especially good advice if you're going from one career to another. ~ Scott Eastwood, #NFDB
1156:If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1157:A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
1158:For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for more money, but in our fear—fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a temptation. Sometimes our pride also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more than we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and less than we ought on those who really need our help. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1159:There is temptation to place too much importance on those things that you're meant to do, and not on to little everyday happinesses. I think if you do what makes you happy on a daily basis, your days gather into years and you have a happy life. I don't want to think too far ahead. I want to make sure that I enjoy tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. And we'll see what happens. ~ Guy Garvey, #NFDB
1160:I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
1161:I want to say, however, one thing our media in America has done which didn't happen in other totalitarian states is it has very effectively stood up to Donald Trump who has obvious fascist tendencies and his - who's a temptation like all authoritarian figures to try to crush the media or make it obey him. As that - the media has, in fact, stood up to him and has refused to bow out or cower. ~ Tim Wu, #NFDB
1162:The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1163:In the deceitfulness of our hearts, we sometimes play with temptation by entertaining the thought that we can always confess and later ask forgiveness. Such thinking is exceedingly dangerous. God’s judgement is without partiality. He never overlooks our sin. He never decides not to bother, since the sin is only a small one. No, God hates sin intensely whenever and wherever He finds it. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
1164:On this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it. Our life is a continual combat, but one in which Jesus Christ fights for us. We must pass on unmoved, while temptations rage around us, as the traveler, overtaken by a storm, simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and pushes on more vigorously toward his destined home. ~ Francois Fenelon, #NFDB
1165:The temptation to continue to creep on your ex over the Internet is nearly universal. One study found that 88 percent of those who continued to have access to their ex’s Facebook page said they sometimes monitored their ex’s activities, while 70 percent of people who had disconnected from an ex admitted to trying to spy on the ex’s page by other means, such as through a friend’s account. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
1166:But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
1167:The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1168:Violence brings only temporary victories; violence, by creating more social problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1169:I did not intend making a philippic against covetousness, a sin to which I believe no one here is addicted. Let us not, however, plume ourselves in not being guilty of a vice to which, as we have no natural bias so in not committing it, we resist no temptation. What I meant to insist on was, that exchanging a turbulent for a quiet sin, or a scandalous for an orderly one, is not reformation. ~ Hannah More, #NFDB
1170:Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
1171:Satan takes our circumstances and builds strongholds in our lives—how he wages war on the battlefield of the mind. But, thank God, we have weapons to tear down the strongholds. God doesn’t abandon us and leave us helpless. First Corinthians 10:13 promises us that God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear, but with every temptation He will also provide the way out, the escape. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1172:In the current economic situation, the temptation for the more dynamic economies is that of chasing after advantageous alliances that, nevertheless, can have harmful effects for poorer states, prolonging situations of extreme mass poverty of men and women and using up the earth's natural resources, entrusted to man by God the Creator-as Genesis says-that he might cultivate and protect it. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1173:I think that the Vietnam War era is important because we tend not to want to revisit it. For black people, there was the temptation of disaffection. People looked for alternative ways to express themselves personally and politically, people doubted the system, and there was the terrible kind of division in black America between a radical leadership and a much older, compromising leadership. ~ Darryl Pinckney, #NFDB
1174:God’s way of training requires the constant exercise of an individual’s spiritual senses so that he will train himself to discern good from evil. When a child is rightly trained, he will listen to the voice of the Spirit in times of temptation; and, when he is confronted with the allurements of the occult, his spiritual senses will have been trained “to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14). ~ Frank Hammond, #NFDB
1175:I neglected to watch and be sober. I loosened the restraints that kept my lusts in check. I sinned against the light of the Word and the goodness of God.” With each statement his voice grew more troubled. “I have grieved the Spirit and He is gone. I flirted with temptation and the Devil came to me. I have provoked God to anger and He has left me. I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1176:My own mother wrecked her brains with chemicals, which were supposed to make her sleep. When I get depressed, I take a little pill, and I cheer up again. And so on. So it is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day. *** ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1177:No one is here," Char said. "You need resist temptation no longer." "Only if you slide too." "I'll go first so I can catch you at the bottom." He flew down so incautiously that I suspected him of years of practice in his own castle. It was my turn. The ride was a dream, longer and steeper than the rail at home. The hall rose to meet me, and Char was there. He caught me and spun me around. ~ Gail Carson Levine, #NFDB
1178:The comparison between the previous two figures shows one of the most classic mistakes when troubleshooting networks. Sometimes, the temptation is to connect to a router and ping the host on the attached LAN, and it works. So, the engineer moves on, thinking that the network layer issues between the router and host work fine, when the problem still exists with the host’s default router setting. ~ Wendell Odom, #NFDB
1179:The picture is supposed to go up just inside the front door, so it's the first thing you see when you come in. It's green. It's about the size of a barn door. It has one vertical orange stripe, and it's called 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony.' Mother wrote a letter to the paper, saying the picture was an insult to the memory of Father, and to the memory of every serious artist who ever lived. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
1180:Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
1181:Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: "Is it genuwyne?" Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1182:We are not made up only of our light and happiness but also of darkness and sorrow. To deny the darkness of yourself is to deny half of who you are, and when you love, truly love, you need to love the whole person not just the part that smiles and waves, but the part that thinks murderous thoughts and knows that pain is both pleasure and temptation, but still thinks puppies are really cute. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
1183:Philosophers should resist the temptation to be publicly virtuous. Given an unjust society, from the vantage of what counts as the public good, they are corrupters, not edifiers. The desire to be seen to be virtuous, to make a positive contribution, is a deleterious symptom of professionalization. Philosophy's social utility is an ersatz for its duty to mount challenges to the entire social order. ~ Ray Brassier, #NFDB
1184:Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule. ~ Robert K Merton, #NFDB
1185:After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. MAT6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. MAT6:11 Give us this day our daily bread. MAT6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. MAT6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1186: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, #NFDB
1187:Please, Karish, all this temptation before you.” I nodded at all the pretty people around us. “Something’s going to burst.”
He smiled. No, leered. “You offering to do something about it?”
I reached back for one of the dishes on the table and found a wicked-looking knife. I raised it and cocked a suggestive brow.
He paled. “You’re a sick, sick woman.”
“Still think you’re going to like me? ~ Moira J Moore,#NFDB
1188:I leaned against the fence and crossed my arms and stared at her. After a while she looked over and said, “Why are you staring at me?” “Because I am the Lord High Keeper of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong, and I am trying to figure out what to do.” She blinked at me. “Jiminy Cricket,” I said. “He was also Counselor in Moments of Temptation, and Guide Along the Straight and Narrow Path. You need that. ~ Robert Crais, #NFDB
1189:I never touch sugar, cheese, bread... I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat. ~ Karl Lagerfeld, #NFDB
1190:Maya sat with Phoebe and Chase. He didn’t linger on that group, because he knew what would happen. His gaze would settle on Phoebe, and he wouldn’t want to look away. Not with the firelight making her eyes shine and her skin glow. Not with the sound of her voice easing inside of him and tying him up in knots. She was five kinds of temptation with just enough hell thrown in to make things interesting. ~ Susan Mallery, #NFDB
1191:Our efforts to fight back with joy are riddled with the temptation to turn our backs, throw up our hands, and abandon the battle. That’s precisely when we need to praise, when our decision to rejoice matters most. Even microscopic offerings cement our commitment to follow God in anything. This grace-given resolve to celebrate Christ in all things is fortified in the storms, not on the still seas. ~ Margaret Feinberg, #NFDB
1192:And "sharing the work of survival," therefore, means resisting every temptation towards independence, towards personal liberty, towards "doing your own thing". This takes s sober vigilance and a persistent labour in a world which elevates the individual above the community, in a society which claims that individual desires are more important than contracts, commitments, and the good of the family ~ Walter Wangerin Jr, #NFDB
1193:Coming to our senses involves cultivating an overarching awareness of all our senses, including our own minds, and their limitations, including the temptation when we feel deeply insecure and have a lot of resources, to try to control as rigidly and as tightly as possible all variables in the external world, an impossible and ultimately depleting, intrinsically violent, and self-exhausting enterprise. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1194:You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter;but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world! ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
1195:In the stories of the founding of Mecca, the patriarch Abraham was guided on his journey by the Shekinah, who directed him where to build. Significantly the Shekinah was said to have marked the spot for Abraham by curling up like a serpent.[191] The serpent imagery here is reminiscent of the Egyptian Goddess Qudshu, the Gnostic Edem as well as the serpent of wisdom or temptation in the Garden of Eden. ~ Sorita d Este, #NFDB
1196:Liberals want to set up social welfare committees to help whites and West Indians love each other in Birmingham. But all such efforts are doomed to failure. For the strong the weak are just too much of a temptation; and in all fairness it seems to me quite wicked for black people to have tempted the powerful with so much powerless-ness for so long. The obvious answer is to redress this imbalance in power. ~ Lewis Nkosi, #NFDB
1197:Of all the temptations that ever I met with in my life, to question the being of God, and truth of His gospel is the worst, and the worst to be borne; when this temptation comes, it takes away my girdle from me, and removeth the foundation from under me: Oh! I have often thought of that word, Have your loins girt about with truth; and of that, When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1198:The first part of this drill is to resist the temptation to label other people as stupid because of their “stupid” activities or assertions. Most people aren’t stupid. They have somehow gotten captured by a flawed belief. The second part of the drill is to turn into a detective and try to find this flawed belief. The third part is to devise a way to help the other person discover how to replace the belief. ~ Gary Klein, #NFDB
1199:We should resist the temptation to roll every normatively desirable attribute into one giant amorphous concept of mental functioning, as though one could never find one admirable trait without all the others being equally present. Instead, we should recognize that there can exist instrumentally powerful information processing systems—intelligent systems—that are neither inherently good nor reliably wise. ~ Nick Bostrom, #NFDB
1200:I never touch sugar, cheese, bread...
I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat. ~ Karl Lagerfeld,#NFDB
1201:In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the wizard Saruman turns from wisdom to rapacity in his taste for power. He rips out the ancient trees and flattens the land to make room for the industries of war. The lesson is simple: All technology, along with its blessings, also carries a temptation—an appetite for control, a willingness to flatten the world (if needed) to make space for the human will. And ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
1202:He said there is a place in Gaul, the oldest church in their part of the world, where some of the Latin monks have outwitted death by secret means. He offered to sell me their secrets, which he has inscribed in a book."
The abbot shudders. "God preserve us from such heresies," he says hastily. "I am certain, my son, that you refused this temptation."
Dracula smiles. "You know I am fond of books. ~ Elizabeth Kostova,#NFDB
1203:Miss Prism: And you do not seem to realize, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray. Chasuble: But is a man not equally attractive when married? Miss Prism: No married man is ever attractive except to his wife. Chasuble: And often, I've been told, not even to her. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1204:There is always some limit which the individual accepts. He identifies this limit with himself. Horror seizes him at the thought that this limit may cease to be. But we are wrong to take this limit and the individual’s acceptance of it seriously. The limit is only there to be overreached. Fear and horror are not the real and final reaction; on the contrary, they are a temptation to overstep the bounds. ~ Georges Bataille, #NFDB
1205:is like a leaden blanket of darkness—darkness and fear, because you are possessed by dread: a universal dread that clamps like a limpet onto every passing thought. In the depths of an attack, I wake each morning feeling as if I have committed a capital crime and been sentenced to hang. The overwhelming temptation is to seek oblivion, and at the worst, the thought of the ultimate oblivion is always with you. ~ John Harwood, #NFDB
1206:Never yield to that temptation, which, to most young men, is very strong, of exposing other people's weaknesses and infirmities, for the sake either of diverting the company, or of showing your own superiority. You may get the laugh on your side by it for the present; but you will make enemies by it for ever; and even those who laugh with you then, will, upon reflection, fear, and consequently hate you. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
1207:Since no country has had any experience with the tactical use of nuclear weapons, the possibility of miscalculation is considerable. The temptation to use the same target system as for conventional war and thereby produce vast casualties will be overwhelming. The pace of operations may out strip the possibilities of negotiation. Both sides would be operating in the dark with no precedents to guide them.119 ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
1208:It is a most fearful fact to think of, that in every heart there is some secret spring that would be weak at the touch of temptation, and that is liable to be assailed. Fearful, and yet salutary to think of; for the thought may serve to keep our moral nature braced. It warns us that we can never stand at ease, or lie down in this field of life, without sentinels of watchfulness and campfires of prayer. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin, #NFDB
1209:Now back East you can be middling and get along. But if you go to try a thing on in this Western country, you've got to do it WELL. You've got to deal cyards WELL; you've got to steal WELL; and if you claim to be quick with your gun, you must be quick, for you're a public temptation, and some man will not resist trying to prove he is the quicker. You must break all the Commandments WELL in this Western country ~ Owen Wister, #NFDB
1210:There is a danger in our modern practice of using embedded journalism. As there is less and less money available for journalism to uphold its independence, there is a temptation for people to take short cuts. If this army or that army or this corporation is willing to pay for your flight or your accommodation, then it's much more difficult to tell what the real story might be. I do have a concern about that. ~ Stuart Franklin, #NFDB
1211:The temptation to just crawl up onto the bank and lie there in a huddled mass of misery was almost overwhelming, but some part of her, as she observed with a certain dazed detachment, was too pigheaded to give up. No,she would plod on likely to the ends of the earth, slipping and sliding, gasping and groaning, until either the river won or she did.Had she been inclined to wager, she would have bet on the river. ~ Josie Litton, #NFDB
1212:To be sure, Americans, and American Air Force planners in particular, were the only people in the world who believed that they had won a war by bombing, and, particularly in Japan, by bombing civilians. But the nuclear era eventually put that demonic temptation—to deter, defeat, or punish an adversary by an operational capability to annihilate most of its civilian population—within the reach of many nations. ~ Daniel Ellsberg, #NFDB
1213:If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1214:No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s owns self sufficiency. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1215:Like Jesus, we can decide, daily or instantly, to give no heed to temptation (see D&C 20:22). We can respond to irritation with a smile instead of scowl, or by giving warm praise instead of icy indifference. By our being understanding instead of abrupt, others, in turn, may decide to hold on a little longer rather than to give way. Love, patience, and meekness can be just as contagious as rudeness and crudeness. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1216:Not knowing is hard. It would be nice to know if that elder is going to succumb to the temptation of being divisive. It would be nice to know if the finances of the church are going to rebound. It would be nice to know how that new preaching series will be received, if those young missionaries will make all the adjustments that they need to make, or if you’ll get the permits to build that needed worship space. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1217:Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states. The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1218:No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with the divine power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s own self-sufficiency. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
1219:We live in a time of transition, an uneasy era which is likely to endure for the rest of this century... During this period we may be tempted to abandon some of the time-honored principles and commitments which have been proven during the difficult times of past generations. We must never yield to this temptation. Our American values are not luxuries but necessities - not the salt in our bread but the bread itself. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
1220:It is no wonder you are tempted; on the contrary, it would be something new if you were not, because man's life is nothing but temptation, and no one is exempt from it, especially those who have given themselves to God; his own Son even passed through this trial. But if it is necessary for everyone, it is also a source of merit for those to whom God grants the grace of turning all things to good, as you do. ~ Saint Vincent de Paul, #NFDB
1221:So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride - the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
1222:At a symbolic level, the forest and field are metaphors for the mind. The forest is the untamed mind. The field is the domesticated mind. The consciousness is the farmer. If one is conscious like Ram, faithful and attentive, the mind will be like Sita. When one is conscious like Gautam, ignoring the mind, the mind will be seduced by temptation. In the absence of awareness, the mind will be wild with no direction. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
1223:Democracy and morality are simply not synonymous. “All nations are tempted—and few have been willing to resist the temptation for long—to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law,” he goes on, “is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. ~ Robert D Kaplan, #NFDB
1224:I needed a go-to script for this situation. So, I lowered my head and prayed, “God, I am at the end of my strength here. This is the moment I’ve got to sense Your strength stepping in. The Bible says Your power is made perfect in weakness. This would be a really good time for that truth to be my reality. Help me see something else besides this temptation looming so large in front of me it seems impossible to escape. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
1225:If you will tell me when God permits a Christian to lay aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1226:One of the central problems with bringing up children in our day is the constant temptation to underestimate their capacities. We teach them profane and irreverent little ditties, not psalms and hymns. We give them moralistic little stories, not biblical doctrine and ethics. We expect them to act as though they have no brains or souls until they have graduated from college. We aim at nothing, and we hit it every time. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1227:The bearing of all this on the question of premeditation [and premeditation will imply sanity] is very obvious. You must not allow any considerations of age or temptation to weigh with you in the finding of your verdict. Before you can come to a verdict of guilty but insane you must be well and thoroughly convinced that the condition of his mind was such as would have qualified him at the moment for a lunatic asylum. ~ John Galsworthy, #NFDB
1228:the “etiquette of freedom,” to use poet Gary Snyder’s phrase. It encompasses small acts like teaching your children to be honest in their dealings with others. It includes serving on community councils and as soccer coaches. It means leaving a place in better shape than you found it. It means helping others during hard times and being able to ask for help. It means resisting the temptation to call a problem someone else’s. ~ Eric Liu, #NFDB
1229:There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1230:The temptation is to insist that black men ‘choose’ to be criminals,” she wrote. “The myth of choice here is seductive, but it should be resisted.”9 What Alexander and others who buy her arguments are really asking us to resist are not myths but realities—namely, which groups are more likely to commit crimes and how such trends drive the negative racial stereotypes that are so prevalent among blacks and nonblacks alike. ~ Jason L Riley, #NFDB
1231:Dr. Murray made it clear to me before I left that a woman who enhoys the Act is as loose as a harlot. God gives pleasure in it only to husbands. Women are the source of evil and temptation, therefore women are to blame when men fall into fleshly error. It was Eve who seduced Adam, Eve who entered into league with the serpent, who was the Devil in disguise. So the only pleasure women are allowed is in their children. ~ Colleen McCullough, #NFDB
1232: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, #NFDB
1233:The temptation to hide in his job, to allow all his thoughts and emotions to become absorbed in the details of his career was hard to resist. It felt like virtue and it was quite possible to be completely self-righteous about it. But it was, he knew, only cowardice in disguise. If you weren’t willing to face your life—all your life, including the rough parts—then you weren’t truly living. You were just making a living. He ~ Pamela Morsi, #NFDB
1234:Resist the temptation to be someone once again. Allow yourself to be no one; allow your mind to be empty of thought, unfurnished, until the identities gradually filter back in. Notice the space between your identities and the awareness of them. Notice if a similar gap appears at other times during the day, an empty space that you may have ignored before but can now lean into and prolong. Continue to open to the openness. ~ Stephan Bodian, #NFDB
1235:It had always struck her as wrong that we should judge ourselves-or, more usually, others-by single acts, as if a single snapshot said anything about what a person had been like over the whole course of his life. It could say something, of course, but only if it was typical of how that person behaved; otherwise, no, all it said that at that moment, in those particular circumstances, temptation won a local victory. ~ Alexander McCall Smith, #NFDB
1236:It isn’t God’s job to make sick people healthy. That’s the doctors’ job. God’s job is to make sick people brave, and in my experience, that’s something God does really well. Prayer, as I understand it, is not a matter of begging or bargaining. It is the act of inviting God into our lives so that, with God’s help, we will be strong enough to resist temptation and resilient enough not to be destroyed by life’s unfairness. ~ Harold S Kushner, #NFDB
1237:One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!
THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though. ~ Luigi Pirandello,#NFDB
1238:The right to pursue happiness sends me and other Americans, even here where we are meant to resist outside temptation, on a hunt for it. If I’m not hungry, I might seek other forms of happiness, or pleasure, which is part of my American birthright, though the most misconceived notion of them or the most difficult to realize; I can pursue several means and ways to be happy, if I am able to forget what makes me habitually sad. ~ Lynne Tillman, #NFDB
1239:The Lights..." said Norv the Raw, as if we might not have noticed.
Before any further statements of the obvious could be made doors of gleaming steel started to slide down from recesses above every entrance above the Gilden Gate. The action accompanied by a squealing noise that set my teeth on edge, the sound of nails down Lundist's chalkboard.
"The doors..." said Norv. I resisted temptation to beat him around the head. ~ Mark Lawrence,#NFDB
1240:The weak and the defenseless in this world invite aggression from others. The best way we can serve peace is by removing the temptation from the path of those who think we are weak and, for that reason, they can bully or attack us. That temptation can only be removed if we make ourselves so strong that nobody dare entertain any aggressive designs against us. Pakistan has come to stay and no power on earth can destroy it ~ Muhammad Ali Jinnah, #NFDB
1241:You ask me if I do not think that men are strange beings - I do indeed, I have often thought so - and I think too that the mode of bringing them up is strange, they are not half sufficiently guarded from temptation - Girls are protected as if they were something very frail and silly indeed while boys are turned loose on the world as if they - of all beings in existence, were the wisest and the least liable to be led astray. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1242:Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1243:Contemplative prayer is a method of exposing and disengaging from the ordinary obstacles to our awareness of God’s presence with us. This prayer is not an end, but a beginning. It’s easy to give in to the temptation to chase after the enemy every time he shows himself; sometimes it’s the right thing to do. There is a better way to defeat him—fix our eyes and our hearts steadfastly on Jesus. His light will drive out the darkness. ~ James W Goll, #NFDB
1244:Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast saved me from all my most mischievous ways, that Thou mightest become sweet to me beyond all the seductions which I used to follow; and that I may love Thee entirely, and grasp Thy hand with my whole heart, and that Thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the end. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1245:It is only after the unhappy experience of worldliness that man desires to return again to his father's house to begin the long and difficult evolutionary process which leads him back to God. At last, after numerous trials, he comes again to his father, who receives him with great joy and gives him preferment above his righteous brother who never having been tempted had never risen above temptation. ~ Manly P Hall, How to Understand Your Bible, #NFDB
1246:Your first film is always your best film, in a way. There's something about your first film that you never ever get back to, but you should always try. It's that slight sense of not knowing what you're doing, because the technical skills you learn - especially if you have a film that works, that has some kind of success - are beguiling. The temptation is to use them again, and they're not necessarily good storytelling techniques. ~ Danny Boyle, #NFDB
1247:She does not want to feel even the faintest temptation to call his mobile number, as she had done obsessively for the first year after his death so she could hear his voice on the answering service. Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day. But today, the Anniversary of the day he died, is a day when all bets are off. ~ Jojo Moyes, #NFDB
1248:Hear, Lord, my prayer; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee all Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast drawn me out of all my most evil ways, that Thou mightest become a delight to me above all the allurements which I once pursued; that I may most entirely love Thee, and clasp Thy hand with all my affections, and Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1249:In his temptation of Jesus, Satan quoted Scripture, and he didn't remember, misquote anything. God wants his children to eat bread, not to starve before stones. God will protect his anointed one with the angels of heaven. God will give his Messiah all the kingdoms of the earth. All this is true. What is satanic about all of this, though, is that Satan wanted our Lord to grasp these things apart from the cross and the empty tomb. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
1250:It facilitates labor and thought so much that there is always the temptation in large schools to omit the endless task of meeting the wants of each single mind, and to govern by steam. But it is at frightful cost. Our modes of Education aim to expedite, to save labor; to do for masses what cannot be done for masses, what must be done reverently, one by one: say rather, the whole world is needed for the tuition of each pupil. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1251:So many things beat upon us in a lifetime that simply enduring may seem almost beyond us… But the test a loving God has set before us is not to see if we can endure difficulty. It is to see if we can endure it well. We pass the test by showing that we remembered Him and the commandments He gave us. And to endure well is to keep those commandments whatever the opposition, whatever the temptation, and whatever the tumult around us. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
1252:Which is better? - To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort - no struggled; - but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flower 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 love me well for a while. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1253:After 1945 we lost our blind faith in the inevitability of human progress. A threshold was crossed, and something important changed when humanity gained possession of what previously only God possessed: the capacity for complete annihilation. In yielding to the temptation to harness the fundamental physics of the universe for the purpose of building city-destroying bombs, have we again heard the serpent whisper, “You will be like God”? ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1254:Another sign of our effectual calling is diligence in our ordinary calling. Some boast of their high calling, but they lie idly at anchor. Religion does not seal warrants to idleness. Christians must not be slothful. Idleness is the devil’s bath; a slothful person becomes a prey to every temptation. Grace, while it cures the heart, does not make the hand lame. He who is called of God, as he works for heaven, so he works in his trade. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
1255:He should never have allowed himself to accept Daisy’s challenge, should never have stayed and played that bloody game for hours. It was just that Daisy had been so adorable, and while they played her attention had been focused entirely on him, and that had been too much temptation to withstand. She was the most provoking, beguiling woman he had ever met. Thunderstorms and rainbows wrapped together in a convenient pocket-sized parcel. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
1256:As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that's euphemism. A good-hearted editor tried to talk me out of using the term "sodomy": that's avoidance. My students don't know the word "fornication" at all: that's forgetfulness. ~ J Budziszewski, #NFDB
1257:But I ask again, are there many like Thee? And could thou believe for one moment that men, too, could face such a temptation? Is the nature of men such, that they can reject miracles and at the great moments of their life, the moments of their deepest, most agonizing spiritual difficulties, cling only to the free verdict of their heart? ... and thou didst hope that man, following Thee, would cling to god and not ask for a miracle. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1258:I cannot say enough of appreciation for your determination to live by the standards of the Church, to walk with the strength of virtue, to keep your minds above the slough of filth which seems to be moving like a flood across the world. Thank you for knowing there is a better way. Thank you for the will to say no. Thank you for the strength to deny temptation and look beyond and above to the shining light of your eternal potential. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1259:History shows us a lot of things. It shows why the Lord's Prayer includes the supplication: "And lead us not into temptation." In my day, dissertations were still written by hand, or drummed out with a typewriter. In the past, you had to round up the literature, find the books and find the passages. Nowadays you click on Wikipedia or Google and you have everything you need. This probably makes it more difficult to resist temptation. ~ Wolfgang Schauble, #NFDB
1260:Man," you say, "when he came from the hand of God, was pure, innocent, and good; but his nature has been corrupted, as a punishment for sin." If man, when just out of the hands of his God, could sin, his nature was imperfect. Why did God suffer him to sin, and his nature to be corrupted? Why did God permit him to be seduced, well knowing that he was too feeble to resist temptation? Why did God create satan, an evil spirit, a tempter? ~ Paul Henri Thiry, #NFDB
1261:Research shows that people who think they have the most willpower are actually the most likely to lose control when tempted.1 For example, smokers who are the most optimistic about their ability to resist temptation are the most likely to relapse four months later, and overoptimistic dieters are the least likely to lose weight. Why? They fail to predict when, where, and why they will give in. They expose themselves to more temptation, ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
1262:Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on. —from “A Slip of the Tongue” (The Weight of Glory) ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1263:Patience is necessary in this life because so much of life is fraught with adversity. No matter how hard we try, our lives will never be without strife and grief. Thus, we should not strive for a peace that is without temptation, or for a life that never feels adversity. Peace is not found by escaping temptations, but by being tried by them. We will have discovered peace when we have been tried and come through the trial of temptation. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
1264:To say it again: it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown. But most importantly, it means denial of the necessity for courageous individual confrontation with Being. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1265:How do we know that the problem is due to a special cause versus a systemic cause? If we’re in the middle of adopting a new way of working, the temptation will always be to blame the new system for the problems that arise. Sometimes that tendency is correct, sometimes not. Learning to tell the difference requires theory. You have to be able to predict the outcome of the changes you make to tell if the problems that result are really problems. ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
1266:It’s not until situations are difficult, when problems come up and temptation is great, that you get to prove your worthiness for progress. As Jim Rohn would say, “Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.” When you hit the wall in your disciplines, routines, rhythms, and consistency, realize that’s when you are separating yourself from your old self, scaling that wall, and finding your new powerful, triumphant, and victorious self. ~ Darren Hardy, #NFDB
1267:Then there are my Somewheres. We all need somewhere to say the private things, the vulnerable things, the scary and true things, the victories and the defeats. "I need to say it somewhere," we say. So then the temptation is to say everything, everywhere, or we end up saying nothing, nowhere. There's something between oversharing or undersharing our real lives. I have learned--slowly, painfully--to say these private things to my Somewheres. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
1268:You know, in some ways conducting is counter-intuitive. It's like winter driving in Finland - if you skid, the natural reaction is to fight with the wheel and jam on the brakes, which is the quickest way to get killed. What you have to do is let go, and the car will right itself. It's the same when an orchestra loses its ensemble. You have to resist the temptation to semaphore, and let the orchestra find its own way back to the pulse. ~ Esa Pekka Salonen, #NFDB
1269:To say it again: it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown. But most importantly, it means denial of the necessity for courageous individual confrontation with Being. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1270:Violence always came too easy to you, that's the problem. It always felt too good. Remember the first time you trod on an ant, and with an infant stamp made the moving still, the present past? Wasn't that a sickly sweet epiphany? Such power in your feet and at your fingertips such temptation! It would take some act of charity to give all that good stuff away. You'd need to be something greater that just another invention of a spiteful god. ~ Stephen Kelman, #NFDB
1271:Be careful,” warned Nietzsche, “lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon.” I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1272:I was reminded of a married chatelaine who, after sleeping with a young vassal one night, had him seized by the palace guards the next morning and summarily executed in a dungeon on trumped-up charges, not only to eliminate all evidence of their adulterous night together and to prevent her young lover from becoming a nuisance now that he thought he was entitled to her favors, but to stem the temptation to seek him out on the following evening. ~ Andr Aciman, #NFDB
1273:In this case we must be logical and exact; for we have to keep watch upon ourselves. The power of wealth, and that power at its vilest, is increasing in the modern world. A very good and just people, without this temptation, might not need, perhaps, to make clear rules and systems to guard themselves against the power of our great financiers. But that is because a very just people would have shot them long ago, from mere native good feeling. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1274:Perhaps all the fear of man, the pride of knowing, the seduction of acclaim, the quest for control, the depression in the face of hardship, the envy of the ministry of others, the bitterness against detractors, and the anxiety of failure are all about the same thing. Each of these struggles is about the temptation to make your ministry about you. From that first dark moment in the garden, this has been the struggle—to make it all about us. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1275:All of the virtues depend upon truth, and truth depends upon them all. Final truth in this world is unattainable, but its pursuit leads the individual away from unfreedom. The temptation to believe what feels right assails us at all times from all directions. Authoritarianism begins when we can no longer tell the difference between the true and the appealing. The cynic who decides that there is no truth is the citizen who welcomes the tyrant. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
1276:But once you realize that we are not just thinking things but creatures of habit, you’ll then realize that temptation isn’t just about bad ideas or wrong decisions; it’s often a factor of de-formation and wrongly ordered habits. In other words, our sins aren’t just discrete, wrong actions and bad decisions; they reflect vices.25 And overcoming them requires more than just knowledge; it requires rehabituation, a re-formation of our loves. One ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1277:God won't permit temptation beyond your strength. It is true that temptations come to all, but God will give you the graces you need to withstand them, if you ask him to and if you are willing to cooperate with his grace...In God's presence, consider: Do I put up a fight when temptations beset me, or do I give up quickly and surrender myself to them without a struggle? Do I rely on God's grace to conquer temptations, or am I conquered by them? ~ Patrick Madrid, #NFDB
1278:I myself, however, could never resist the temptation to read raisin paste for wine in the story of the Miracle of Cana. "When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made raisin paste ... he said unto the bridegroom, 'Every man doth at the beginning doth set forth good raisin paste, and when men have well drunk [eaten? the text is no doubt corrupt], then that which is worse, but thou hast kept the good raisin paste until now. ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
1279:Our identity has nothing to do with how we are perceived by others. But it’s still tempting to believe. I mean, if Jesus was vulnerable to temptation, the rest of us certainly are, whether it be temptation to self-loathing or self-aggrandizement, depression or pride, self-destruction or self-indulgence. We are tempted to doubt our innate value precisely to the degree that we are insecure about our identity from, and our relationship to, God. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1280:I love you!” while I shudder in release. But I fight the temptation and focus on getting Jamie where he needs to go. My dick remains rock-hard despite the mind-blowing climax. I keep fucking him, keep thrusting forward as my hand works his erection. “Oh…yessss…” Sheer bliss rolls through me when his release soaks my fingertips. He comes on a strangled cry. And keeps coming. And then comes some more. I guess nobody can say he didn’t enjoy himself. ~ Sarina Bowen, #NFDB
1281:In any trial, in any bitter situation, you are not alone, you are not helpless, you are not a victim. You have a tree, a cross, shown to you by the Sovereign God of Calvary. Whatever the trial or temptation, it is not more than you can bear. It is bearable. It can be handled. You can know as Joseph knew, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive" (Genesis 50:20). ~ Kay Arthur, #NFDB
1282:Time passed on; and as the eldest son did not come back, and no tidings were heard of him, the second son set out, and the same thing happened to him. He met the fox, who gave him the good advice: but when he came to the two inns, his eldest brother was standing at the window where the merrymaking was, and called to him to come in; and he could not withstand the temptation, but went in, and forgot the golden bird and his country in the same manner. ~ Jacob Grimm, #NFDB
1283:To forgive another from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. As long as we do not forgive we pull them with us, or worse, as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies & then define ourselves as being offended & wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves. It is the way to the freedom of the children of God. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
1284:After a while Lucian spoke curiosity evident in his tone.
'So why do you care so much Giving in to the temptation of a little forbidden snack ' Lucian's laugh was derisive.
'None of your damned business.'
'That's forbidden too in case you forgot. Not that I don't mind a little witch blood myself from time to time. We always crave the illicit don't we I just didn't think my straitlaced uptight brother would indulge in such inclinations. ~ Amalie Howard,#NFDB
1285:A throne is always paid for in blood.
The king of En had told her that once. Even should a king's ascension be bloodless as a gift from Heaven, to hold onto one's throne invariably meant that blood must flow -- as it had at the beginning, in the fight against the false king's armies, and the quelling of civil war, and the execution of criminals.
Luckily, the fighting part was easy for Yoko. All she had to do was resist the temptation to run away. ~ Fuyumi Ono,#NFDB
1286:But that which helped me in this temptation, was divers considerations, of which, three in special here I will name, the first was the consideration of these two scriptures, Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive, and let thy widows trust in me: and again, The Lord said, Verily it shall be well with thy remnant, verily, I will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil, and in time of affliction. Jer. xlix. 11; xv. 11. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1287:Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists. ~ Hisham Matar, #NFDB
1288:I myself have a number of duties to attend to, so I must leave.”
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Why?”
He paused and took a step to me. Darkness, soft-edged and heavy, clung to the room. In the shadows, his smile held all the lazy grace of a cat.
“Would you miss me?”
“Curiosity inspired my question. Nothing more,” I said, but even my voice was unconvinced.
“Even so, there’s no greater temptation than to stay by your side. ~ Roshani Chokshi,#NFDB
1289:Short-term versus Long-term Consequences An “easy” short-term decision may introduce long-term problems; a “hard” short-term decision may often be best in the long run. Conflict avoidance often leads founders to make easy short-term decisions; they succumb to the temptation to sidestep or postpone acknowledging—not to mention resolving—these dilemmas, especially if coming to a decision would require difficult conversations about what could go wrong. ~ Noam Wasserman, #NFDB
1290:There are some people that we know all our lives and yet
never really feel we know them at all. But there are other people—” Unable to resist the temptation, he
ran a feather-light caress down the curve of her cheek with one leather-sheathed knuckle. The cobalt
depths of her eyes flickered with response, but she said nothing, heeding his every word. “—people we
meet in a day, and instantly, it feels as though we’ve known them all our lives. ~ Gaelen Foley,#NFDB
1291:—A MOTHER’S PRAYER— Father of Encouragement Thank you for taking the time to show love to your disciples by affirming and encouraging them. Help us remember that our well-aimed words will carry life to the hearts of our children. Teach us to extol their positive characteristics whenever we can and to resist the temptation to use words only for correction. Give us lips that speak grace and that show the heart of your love through the things we say. Amen ~ Sally Clarkson, #NFDB
1292:Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,” Sanya said. “That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1293:Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,' Sayna said. 'That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness. ~ Jim Butcher, #NFDB
1294:Do you ever run into the grocery store for two or three things, and walk out with twenty? Somewhere between the milk and bananas, you discover a cartful of things you didn’t realize you “needed!” Supermarkets are designed to promote impulse buying. High-margin, brightly packaged items are cleverly displayed to catch your eye and empty your wallet. Avoid the temptation by making a shopping list at home, and sticking to it when you get to the store. Instead ~ Francine Jay, #NFDB
1295:Our digital experiences are out of body. This biases us toward depersonalised behaviour in an environment where one’s identity can be a liability. But the more anonymously we engage with others, the less we experience the human repercussions of what we say and do. By resisting the temptation to engage from the apparent safety of anonymity, we remain accountable and present - and are much more likely to bring our humanity with us into the digital realm ~ Douglas Rushkoff, #NFDB
1296:Robin fled the room.
Back in the main lab, she stood with her back against the wall, eyes closed, gasping.
"Let me guess. The selkie—male?" Rick's tone was politely inquisitive.
The flush on Robin's face became one of embarrassment. So much for the biologist and her professional demeanor. "Yes. Yes, he is."
"They have a knack for that."
"A knack for what?"
"Flustering young women out of their wits."
The Temptation of Robin Green ~ Carrie Vaughn,#NFDB
1297:What were you thinking? You just met him. (Selena) I know. It’s so not like me, but I couldn’t help myself. It was just like that weird magnetic force that grabs me when I’m walking past the Frostbyte Café and makes me swerve in to get a triple scoop of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. The power of temptation was just too much, Selena. I couldn’t resist it. He was a Chunky Monkey container and all I could think was, ‘Someone give me a spoon.’ (Sunshine) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon, #NFDB
1298:the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score. ~ Ethel Smyth, #NFDB
1299:You tend a wound nearly as well as you dance."
Her blue-gray gaze flicked up to his, wide with surprise. "I wasn't sure if you recognized me from the ball."
This was intimate, her face so close to his. He naked and she with the upper slopes of her breasts uncovered. He felt hazy with desperate temptation. He could smell her, above the scent of his own blood- a faint flower scent.
Not cedarwood, thank God.
"You're hard to forget," he murmured. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,#NFDB
1300:Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action -- the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors -- is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1301:Love is a commitment that will be tested in the most vulnerable areas of spirituality, a commitment that will force you to make some very difficult choices. It is a commitment that demands that you deal with your lust, your greed, your pride, your power, your desire to control, your temper, your patience, and every area of temptation that the Bible clearly talks about. It demands the quality of commitment that Jesus demonstrates in His relationship to us. ~ Ravi Zacharias, #NFDB
1302:There are heroes and, emphatically, heroines enough in this history. Yielding to the temptation to focus on their courage, however, may miss the point. Part of the legacy of people like Ella Baker and Septima Clark is a faith that ordinary people who learn to believe in themselves are capable of extraordinary acts, or better, of acts that seem extraordinary to us precisely because we have such an impoverished sense of the capabilities of ordinary people. ~ Charles M Payne, #NFDB
1303:What were you thinking? You just met him. (Selena)
I know. It’s so not like me, but I couldn’t help myself. It was just like that weird magnetic force that grabs me when I’m walking past the Frostbyte Café and makes me swerve in to get a triple scoop of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. The power of temptation was just too much, Selena. I couldn’t resist it. He was a Chunky Monkey container and all I could think was, ‘Someone give me a spoon.’ (Sunshine) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,#NFDB
1304:Families are wonderful institution," he said. "I value mine more than I can possibly say. But each of us has an individual life to live, our own path to tread, our own destiny to forge. You can imagine, if you will, how my family wished to shelter and protect me and do my living for me so that I would never again know fear or pain or abandonment. Eventually I had to step clear of them-or I might have fallen into the temptation of allowing them to do just that. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
1305:A second barrier to total surrender is our pride. We don’t want to admit that we’re just creatures and not in charge of everything. It is the oldest temptation: “You’ll be like God!”11 That desire — to have complete control — is the cause of so much stress in our lives. Life is a struggle, but what most people don’t realize is that our struggle, like Jacob’s, is really a struggle with God! We want to be God, and there’s no way we are going to win that struggle. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
1306:As the specter of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) spreads throughout Iraq, the temptation will rise among opponents of the 2003 invasion to say 'I told you so' to imperial managers, as if imperial managers share a basic concern over human catastrophe, as if they themselves had not destroyed Iraq, and murdered Iraqis, and deformed Iraqi fetuses with the aid of uranium depleted weaponry long before ISIS emerged over a landscape of smoking ashes and ruin. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1307:There was wine in a cup of gold
and a girl of fifteen from Wu,
her eyebrows painted dark
and with slippers of red brocade.
If her conversation was poor,
how beautifully she could sing!
Together we dined and drank
until she settled in my arms.
Behind her curtains
embroidered with lotuses,
how could I refuse
the temptation of her advances?
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Li Bai, Confessional
,#NFDB
1308:The war against materialism in our hearts is exactly that: a war. It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably. It requires strong and steady resolve to live out the gospel in the middle of an American dream that indentifies success as moving up the ladder, getting the bigger house, purchasing the nicer car, buying the better clothes, eating the finer food, and acquiring more things. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
1309:An Apologue
A traveler observed one day
A loaded fruit-tree by the way.
And reining in his horse exclaimed:
'The man is greatly to be blamed
Who, careless of good morals, leaves
Temptation in the way of thieves.
Now lest some villain pass this way
And by this fruit be led astray
To bag it, I will kindly pack
It snugly in my saddle-sack.'
He did so; then that Salt o' the Earth
Rode on, rejoicing in his worth.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
1310:The temptation is to insist that black men “choose” to be criminals; the system does not make them criminals, at least not in the way that slavery made blacks slaves or Jim Crow made them second-class citizens. The myth of choice here is seductive, but it should be resisted. African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct. ~ Michelle Alexander, #NFDB
1311:You don't need to remind me how easy it is to slough off and become lazy. Oh, I know how sweet the temptation is.
So modernity has brought with it an endless internal mental conflict between stern, rather parental inner voices and lazy childish ones. Unfortunately, these two voices, which have functioned as opposites, checking each other for centuries, have been confounded into idiotic agreement and collusion with the appearance of digital network technology. ~ Jaron Lanier,#NFDB
1312:If I want to free myself from endless cycles of struggling with temptation, I need to keep rediscovering that the pain of the struggle is greater than the pain of the desire. If I develop the habit of restraining myself, I'll enjoy the relief of feeling the desires pass, and I'll remember that desires are not the problem. Feeling pushed around by them is. I'll continue to have desires, of course, because I'm alive, but they'll be more modest in their demands. ~ Sylvia Boorstein, #NFDB
1313:On many days, doing what matters most will not be easy. It is not supposed to be. God’s purpose in creation was to let us prove ourselves. The plan was explained to us in the spirit world before we were born. We were valiant enough there to qualify for the opportunity to choose against temptation here to prepare for eternal life, the greatest of all the gifts of God. We rejoiced to know the test would be one of faithful obedience even when it would not be easy. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
1314:Avoid temptation. Very few people could quit smoking without ridding their house of cigarettes. Alcoholics avoid bars to stop drinking. Protect yourself by protecting your environment. Decrease the time when you are exposed to rich foods to avoid testing your “willpower.” One of the best ways to do this is to throw all the rich foods out of the house. Just as important is to replace harmful foods with those used in the McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss. ~ John A McDougall, #NFDB
1315:similarities between the stories: the names of Adapa and Adam, the loss of eternal life, the rejection of a command and the trickster temptation. Yet there were such significant differences: the Shinar pantheon versus the sole Yahweh Elohim; failure to eat rather than eating; no trees, no wife. It was almost as if the Adapa story was an inversion of the Garden of Eden, a replacement narrative intended to displace loyalty from the original story onto a new paradigm. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1316:When wicked men attack us with a view to overwhelm us, either by force or fraud, we know how difficult it is to preserve always the same fortitude. We place our hope of victory in endeavoring resolutely and vigorously to oppose force to force, and art to art. And this is a temptation which so much the more affects honest and steady men, who are otherwise zealous to do well, when the cruelty of their enemies compels them to turn aside from the right path. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1317:Walking alone in the dark early the next morning, New Year's Day, the coming year stretched out like a bleak and endless highway, leading nowhere.... Having held on for months, thinking that that if only we can get through to the new year, now I felt plunged into black ice, in danger of drowning.... Suddenly I understood our friends' concern. Could this be what precedes some kind of breakdown--a sudden shift to feel oblivion as temptation, even as seduction? ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
1318:This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen. ~ George Carlin, #NFDB
1319:Do you live and work here?" Trinity clenched her fist against his chest, her thoughts spinning. "At the ranch?"
The corner of his mouth quirked and he nodded. "Uh-huh."
Oh lord.
"That's just great." She rested her head against his muscled chest. "That's like leaving Eve in the garden of Eden not far from the apple tree. Irrisistable temptation within walking distance."
Luke chuckled, his chest vibrating beneath her ear. "Irrisistable, huh? ~ Cheyenne McCray,#NFDB
1320:If ever a girl was [worth waiting], Val, it'd be you, but I can't promise that. You have no idea what my life is like. There are always too many beautiful and willing women. There's too much temptation. Too much expectation. If I wasn't getting it from you I'd probably stray. I know how that sounds, but I'm just being honest. I'm only human, Val. A weak one who's been indulged way too long. I can't give you what you're asking for because I'm afraid of breaking your heart. ~ Kelly Oram, #NFDB
1321:Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren’t out to hurt anyone – quite the reverse. We were out to improve things – but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger – but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1322:Our Father Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, hollow be thy promises and shallow be thy shame. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. On a scale from one to ten, our Lord is totally eleven. Give us this day our daily bread, toasted close to dawn, and forgive us our trespasses as we shoot those who trespass on our lawn, and lead us not into temptation, such as pot or porno, but deliver us from evil (if not delivery, then DiGiorno). ~ Bo Burnham, #NFDB
1323:Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren’t out to hurt anyone – quite the reverse. We were out to improve things – but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger – but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1324:This book was not written because I wanted to offer a supreme model to the man who struggles; I wanted to show him that he must not fear pain, temptation or death - because all three can be conquered, all three have already been conquered. Christ suffered pain, and since then pain has been sanctified. Temptation fought until the very last moment to lead him astray, and Temptation was defeated. Christ died on the Cross, and at that instant death was vanquished forever. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, #NFDB
1325:There had been so many. He had hired young ones because they were more plentiful and worked cheaper. The better of those got married and pregnant and wanted six months off. The bad ones flirted, wore tight miniskirts, and made suggestive comments. He had hired more mature women to negate any physical temptation, but, as a rule, they had been bossy, maternal, menopausal, and they had more doctors' appointments, as well as aches and pains to talk about and funerals to attend. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1326:When the Professor is told by the Polynesian that once there was nothing except a great feathered serpent, unless the learned man feels a thrill and a half temptation to wish it were true, he is no judge of such things at all. When he is assured, on the best Red Indian authority, that a primitive hero carried the sun and moon and stars in a box, unless he clasps his hands and almost kicks his legs as a child would at such a charming fancy, he knows nothing about the matter. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
1327:A car whipped past, the driver eating and a passenger clicking a camera. Moving without going anywhere, taking a trip instead of making one. I laughed at the absurdity of the photographs and then realized I, too, was rolling effortlessly along, turning the windshield into a movie screen in which I, the viewer, did the moving while the subject held still. That was the temptation of the American highway, of the American vacation (from the Latin vacare, "to be empty"). ~ William Least Heat Moon, #NFDB
1328:Faith stands or falls on the truth that the future with God is more satisfying than the one promised by sin. Where this truth is embraced and God is cherished above all, the power of sin is broken. The power of sin is the power of deceit. Sin has power through promising a false future. In temptation sin comes to us and says: "The future with God on his narrow way is hard and unhappy, but the way I promise is pleasant and satisfying." The power of sin is in the power of this lie. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1329:I don’t know what things may be troubling you personally, but, even knowing how terrific you are and how faithfully you are living, I would be surprised if someone somewhere weren’t troubled by a transgression or the temptation of transgression. To you, wherever you may be, I say, Come unto him and lay down your burden. Let him lift the load. Let him give peace to your soul. Nothing in this world is more burdensome than sin—it is the heaviest cross men and women ever bear. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1330:It is, however, no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom. It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. Men, full fledged and at their work, are, for the most part, too busy for much thought; but lads, on whom the work of the world has not yet fallen with all its pressure, — they have time for thinking. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1331:Maybe demons are defined as anything other than God that tries to tell us who we are. And maybe, just moments after Jesus' baptism, when the devil says to him, "If you are the Son of God…" he does so because he knows that Jesus is vulnerable to temptation precisely to the degree that he is insecure about his identity and mistrusts his relationship with God. So if God's first move is to give us our identity, then the devil's first move is to throw that identity into question. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1332:I'm still trying to find the words to heal you,
To take your pain and make it all my own
So your beautiful eyes can smile,
So you can be at peace.
And now that Fate has intervened,
Conspired to draw us together,
I can't resist the lure of your eyes,
The temptation of you beauty,
The siren song of you voice
Whispering my name
In the dark comfort between my sheets.
I can't resist you, baby,
Because I'm falling still,
I'm falling into you. ~ Jasinda Wilder,#NFDB
1333:In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did. But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut. I thought Cal was immune to the corruptive temptation of power. How wrong I was. He was born to be a king. It's what he was made for. It's what he was made to want. ~ Victoria Aveyard, #NFDB
1334:Pray only thus: Our Father, without beginning and without end, like the heavens! May Thy being alone be holy. May power be Thine alone, so that Thy will may be done, without beginning and without end, on earth. Give me the food of life this present day. Efface my former mistakes and wipe them out, as I efface and wipe out all the mistakes my brothers have made; that I may not fall into temptation, but be saved from evil. For the power and strength are Thine, and the decision is Thine. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
1335:Our feelings can quickly deceive us—a weakness our Enemy loves to exploit. He loves to approach us in the midst of a temptation, or in a time of spiritual defeat or depression, and tell us that if we really belonged to Jesus we would not feel this way. He tries to use our feelings to get us to doubt our faith. “Feelings,” however, are the fruit of faith. They should never be its source. Around our church we say, “Don’t feel your way into your beliefs; believe your way into your feelings. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
1336:The work on satisfactory formulation of technical patents was a true blessing for me. It compelled me to be many-sided in thought, and also offered important stimulation for thought about physics. Following a practical profession is a blessing for people of my type. Because the academic career puts a young person in a sort of compulsory situation to produce scientific papers in impressive quantity, a temptation to superficiality arises that only strong characters are able to resist. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1337:What I've learned is that everything in life - and I mean, even the worst of it - can be turned into grace...the test is - for even one moment in our lives - not to strike back at something, no matter how bad it gets...when you're faced with the temptation to get angry or upset and to hit back - you just don't do it. You let the temptation roll over you and not touch you. The idea is not to add to the collective pain...and by not doing so, you make the world a better place. ~ Kira Salak, #NFDB
1338:A wicked idea crept into his mind.
She was a temptation- a temptation aimed at his one weakness. He'd walked alone for so long. For his entire life, really. He'd never thought to seek another. To permit any light into his darkness.
But she was right here, within his grasp. To let her go again was beyond his control right now. He was weakened, dizzy, lost. Dear God, he wanted to keep her for himself.
And the means to convince her to stay with him had just dropped into his lap. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt,#NFDB
1339:If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle? ~ William Makepeace Thackeray, #NFDB
1340:If present reality contradicts such a vision, if they prefer to reject economic modernisation in favour of defence of tradition, if their nation has fallen behind its neighbour across the Rhine, if polls in the summer of 2014 showed that 90 per cent of respondents did not believe their elected president could handle the problems facing them, this leaves them feeling deprived of what they believe should be theirs by historic right and opens them to the temptation of extremist illusions. ~ Jonathan Fenby, #NFDB
1341:Our Father in heaven" -- I am a child away from home.
"Your name be honored as holy"--I am a worshiper.
"Your kingdom come"--I am a subject.
"Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"--I am a servant.
"Give us today our daily bread"--I am a beggar.
"And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors"--I am a sinner.
"And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one"--I am a sinner in danger of being a still greater sinner. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,#NFDB
1342:They were also the tracks on which we channelled a love of Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. Ian Curtis had first introduced us to the icy Germans, and that was quickly followed by an even greater admiration for Moroder, particularly his work with Donna Summer on ‘I Feel Love’ and his production of the wonderful Sparks track ‘Number One Song in Heaven’. His solo record E=MC2 became a big inspiration and definitely led us into ‘Temptation’. All we had to do was work out how they bloody did it. ~ Peter Hook, #NFDB
1343:Through the Spirit of God the hope of heaven is the most powerful force for producing virtue; it is a fountain of joyful endeavor; it is the cornerstone of cheerful holiness. Those who have this hope in them go about their work with vigor, for the joy of the Lord is their strength. They fight hard against temptation, for the hope of the next world repels the fiery darts of the adversary. They can work without immediate reward, for they anticipate a reward in the world to come. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1344:On February 14, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires urging me to return home immediately; my father was "not at all well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to communicate to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the absoluteness of the adverbial phrase, the temptation to dramatize my grief by feigning a virile stoicism-all this perhaps distracted me from any possibility of real pain. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, #NFDB
1345:The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
1346:The issue is not, "What must I do in order to secure my salvation?" but rather, "What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?" It is not, "How can I be virtuous?" but "How can I participate in the struggle of the oppressed for a more just world?"Otherwise our nonviolence is premised on self-justifying attempts to establish our own purity in the eyes of God, others, and ourselves, and that is nothing less than a satanic temptation to die with clean hands and a dirty heart. ~ Walter Wink, #NFDB
1347:Think about the pressure to "pass" by lying about one's agethat familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one's birth oridentity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented "passing" as a term, Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art, and the sexual closet continues the punishment, but pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of "passing," with the least organized support for "coming out" as one's true generational self. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
1348:When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.
...
When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities. ~ Jeanette Winterson,#NFDB
1349:when I turn from church history and examine myself, I find that I too am vulnerable to the Temptation. I lack the willpower to resist shortcut solutions to human needs. I lack the patience to allow God to work in a slow, “gentlemanly” way. I want to seize control myself, to compel others to help accomplish the causes I believe in. I am willing to trade away certain freedoms for the guarantee of safety and protection. I am willing to trade away even more for the chance to realize my ambitions. ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1350:If you are seeking the work God has made you to do, search for the deepest inclination of your heart and follow it to where it meets the suffering of the world.107 Or in the words of Mother Teresa, “Find your own Calcutta.” If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed the one God places in front of you. You must resist the temptation to do nothing because you can do only a little or because you can’t be like someone else who seems more radical. It takes many tiny candles to overcome the darkness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1351:In the case of the former priests this “weakness” was their own sinfulness. Consequently they had to offer sacrifice for their own sins as well. In Jesus’ case it cannot be his own sin, otherwise his self-sacrifice for his brothers would have been less than total; yet he must experience weakness in temptation, the danger of demonic enticement, the difficulty of clinging to God’s will, if he, the doctor, is to gain the necessary knowledge of the human situation which calls for healing. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
1352:At the chalk pit a motor passed him. In it was another type, whom Nature favours — the Imperial. Healthy, ever in motion, it hopes to inherit the earth. It breeds as quickly as the yeoman, and as soundly; strong is the temptation to acclaim it as a super-yeoman, who carries his country’s virtue overseas. But the Imperialist is not what he thinks or seems. He is a destroyer. He prepares the way for cosmopolitanism, and though his ambitions may be fulfilled, the earth that he inherits will be grey. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
1353:Multitudes of Christians fall on the battlefield and fail to overcome evil because they wait until they are immersed in the fires of temptation before making any effort to resist. At that point, it is often too late. As soon as you recognize a fiery dart sailing toward you, there is no time to lose. Hold up that shield of faith and do everything in your power to keep as much distance as possible between you and the temptation. If we yield without a fight, we are in reality inviting temptation. ~ Doug Batchelor, #NFDB
1354:Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
1355:That is a horrid temptation to put before a man who is forbidden to make vigorous movements,” he said.
“Is it really?” she said. “No wonder Miles did not approve. He looked daggers at me.”
“Maybe his face froze that way,” Rupert said. “He was looking daggers at me a few hours ago. Do you think he suspects?”
“I think he knows ,” she said.
“I’m glad I don’t have a sister,” he said. “I should have to get over my aversion to killing people.”
-Rupert and Daphne ~ Loretta Chase,#NFDB
1356:Will Christians turn once again toward an approach that imposes its will on the rest of society? By doing so we would betray our founder, who resisted a temptation to authority over “all the kingdoms of the world,” and who died a martyr at the hands of a powerful state. In the words of Miroslav Volf, “Imposition stands starkly at odds with the basic character of the Christian faith, which is at its heart about self-giving—God’s self-giving and human self-giving—and not about self-imposing.” Even ~ Philip Yancey, #NFDB
1357:Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil—no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What’s real is what is right there in front of us—power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs. God ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1358:The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise, and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1359:And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality,–without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1360:Because when the world denies you it is easy to deny the world; because when the bread is bitter it is easy not to linger at the meal; because when the oil is low it is easy to rise with dawn; because when the body is without surfeit or temptation it is easy to rise above earth on the wings of the spirit. Poverty is very terrible to you, and kills your soul in you sometimes; but it is like the north wind that lashes men into vikings, it is not the soft, luscious, south wind that lulls them to lotos dreams. ~ Ouida, #NFDB
1361:In such times as we are in, whether the threats be global or local or in individual lives, I too pray for the children. Some days it seems that a sea of temptation and transgression inundates them, simply washes over them before they can successfully withstand it, before they should have to face it. And often at least some of the forces at work seem beyond our personal control. Well, some of them may be beyond our control, but I testify with faith in the living God that they are not beyond His. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1362:In the palace, during my imprisonment, I learned that Maven had been made by his mother, formed into the monster he became. There is nothing on earth that can change him or what she did.
But Cal was made too. All of us were made by someone else, and all of us have some thread of steel that nothing and no one can cut.
I thought Cal was immune to the corruptive temptation of power. How wrong I was.
He was born to be a king. It’s what he was made for. It’s what he was made to want. ~ Victoria Aveyard,#NFDB
1363:Tartuffe: For heaven's sake! Before you speak, I pray you take this handkerchief.
Dorine: Whatever do you mean?
Tartuffe: Cove your bosom. I can't bear to see it. Such pernicious sights give rise to sinful thoughts.
Dorine: You're mighty susceptible to temptation then! The flesh must make a great impression on you! I really don't know why you should get so excited. I can't say that I'm so easily roused. I could see you naked from head to foot and your whole carcass wouldn't tempt me in the least. ~ Moli re,#NFDB
1364:The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that because God has been dealing with us—because He has been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper lessons of the Cross—He has thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His Blood. ~ Watchman Nee, #NFDB
1365:Catia’s hired a local guide to whisk us around, and, I suspect, instructed him to tire us out so thoroughly that we wouldn’t have much energy for sneaking off with lifeguards, boys from the Lido, or art teachers. Certainly, though the guide’s a man, Catia has picked one who won’t be any temptation to a group of single teenage girls. He’s a skinny, hollow-chested academic type who wears a sweater and tweed jacket even in this hot weather.
It’s just really unfortunate that he’s also called Luigi. ~ Lauren Henderson,#NFDB
1366:The event concept was sparked from a shared observation amongst these leading lifestyle brands that the economic rebound has spurred greater liquidity into real estate, the stock market is setting new heights and consumers are generally stepping out more for luxury goods and services. After many years of pulling back, it was fun to see guests flirting with temptation, whether that was a new home, a new car, a new look or just to learn more about the trends. Others were happy to take in all the action. ~ Andrea Savage, #NFDB
1367:Write My words in thy heart and consider them diligently, for they shall be very needful to thee in time of temptation. What thou understandest not when thou readest, thou shalt know in the time of thy visitation. I am wont to visit Mine elect in twofold manner, even by temptation and by comfort, and I teach them two lessons day by day, the one in chiding their faults, the other in exhorting them to grow in grace. He who hath My words and rejecteth them, hath one who shall judge him at the last day." ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
1368:In the story of the Buddha’s life we hear of the temptations of Mara, which are extremely subtle. The first temptation is fear of physical destruction. The last is the seduction by the daughters of Mara. This seduction, the seduction of spiritual materialism, is extremely powerful because it is the seduction of thinking that “I” have achieved something. If we think we have achieved something, that we have “made it,” then we have been seduced by Mara’s daughters, the seduction of spiritual materialism. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa, #NFDB
1369:Lord, end my winter, and let my spring begin. I cannot with all my longings raise my soul out of her death and dulness, but all things are possible with thee. I need celestial influences, the clear shinings of thy love, the beams of thy grace, the light of thy countenance, these are the Pleiades to me. I suffer much from sin and temptation, these are my wintry signs, my terrible Orion. Lord, work wonders in me, and for me. Amen. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1370:Time Management Tips: The perpetual processing of the same temptation is both dangerous and time-wasting. Cycling and recycling the same temptation (instead of rejecting such blandishment out of hand) is not only to risk one's soul, again and again, but is to bring on fatigue, so that the Adversary may be able to do indirectly what we will not let him do directly. A lack of decisiveness in dealing with temptation ties up our thought processes and prevents us from doing good with the time allotted to us. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1371:The sorcerer Virgil had himself chopped in pieces and placed in a cauldron to be cooked for eight days, thus to become rejuvenated.10 He had someone watch out that no intruder peeped into the cauldron. The watchman was unable, however, to resist the temptation. It was too soon. Virgil disappeared with a cry, like a little child. I, too, have probably looked too early into the cauldron, into the cauldron of life and its historical development, and no doubt will never manage to be more than a child. […] ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1372:The temptation is to stay inside; to subside into the kind of recluse whom neighborhood children regard with derision and little awe; to let the hedges and weeds grow up, to allow the doors to rust shut, to lie on my bed in some gown-shaped garment and let my hair lengthens and spread out over the pillow and my fingernails to sprout into claws, while candle wax drips onto the carpet. But long ago I made a choice between classicism and romanticism. I prefer to be upright and contained—an urn in daylight. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
1373:As women, we were immensely powerful, Sister Aziza explained. The way Allah had created us, our hair, our nails, our heels, our neck, and ankles—every little curve in our body was arousing. If a woman aroused a man who was not her husband, she was sinning doubly in God’s eyes, by leading the man into temptation and evil thoughts to match her own. Only the robe worn by the wives of the Prophet could prevent us from arousing men and leading society into fitna, uncontrollable confusion and social chaos. She ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
1374:Our father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
hollow be thy promises
and shallow be thy shame.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
On a scale from on to ten,
our Lord is totally eleven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
toasted close to dawn,
and forgive us our trespasses
as we shoot those who trespass on our lawn,
and lead us not into temptation,
such as pot or porno,
but deliver us from evil
(if not delivery, then DiGiorno). ~ Bo Burnham,#NFDB
1375:The longer he held Lady Rose in his arms, the more he desired her. Iain was captivated by her full lips, and for a moment, their breathing seemed to fall into a rhythm. Rose’s arms had softened against him, until they hung loosely around his neck. Her brown eyes met his with awareness and a sense that this should not be happening between them. But he couldn’t deny that he wanted to lower her body and claim her mouth. He wanted to taste the sweetness of her lips and give in to his own temptation. “You ~ Michelle Willingham, #NFDB
1376:The social scientist is in a difficult, if not impossible position. On the one hand there is the temptation to see all of society as one's autobiography writ large, surely not the path to general truth. On the other hand, there is the attempt to be general and objective by pretending that one knows nothing about the experience of being human, forcing the investigator to pretend that people usually know and tell the truth about important issues, when we all know from our own lives how impossible that is. ~ Richard Lewontin, #NFDB
1377:The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense. ~ Michael Faraday, #NFDB
1378:(The pastor) was concerned only with the natives' spiritual welfare, and their material conditions were no interest of his whatever. One thing could be said in favour of the plantations, in fact, and that was that a man working there was at least put out of the way of temptation. His view was that it didn't really matter what happened to a man in this world so long as he had acquired the priceless treasure of Faith. When Jesus said that 'He that believeth in me shall be saved' he was not referring to this life. ~ Norman Lewis, #NFDB
1379:Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith - It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner. ~ Anne Bronte, #NFDB
1380:That said, certain episodes here are true—that is, taken from life. The accident actually happened to me. I didn’t see the taxi coming. The possibility of a suicidal impulse was invented for the sake of the story. In fact, the question has haunted me for a long time: Does life have meaning after Auschwitz? In a universe cursed because it is guilty, is hope still possible? For a young survivor whose knowledge of life and death surpasses that of his elders, wouldn’t suicide be as great a temptation as love or faith? ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
1381:Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith – It must be, either, that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner... ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
1382:With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it's essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly under-appreciated fact that language is the medium we use in the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it's surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
1383:Wow," I said, since it was all I could think of to say. "Wow. That's some outfit." When you've got a big guy wearing Lycra it doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination. I resisted the temptation to ask Eric to turn around. "I don't believe I could be convincing as a queen," Eric said, "but I decided this sent such a mixed signal, almost anything was possible." He fluttered his eyelashes at me. Eric was definitely enjoying this. "Oh, yes," I said, trying to find somewhere else to look. (Living Dead in Dallas) ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
1384:Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it. ~ Joseph Priestley, #NFDB
1385:Whether we're forgiving our parents or someone else or ourselves, the laws of mind remain the same. As we love, we shall be released from pain and as we deny love, we shall remain in pain. Each of us have different fears and different manifestations of fear, but all of us are saved by the same technique: The call to God to save our lives by salvaging our minds. 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For love is the kingdom and love is the glory and love is the power, forever and forever. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
1386:Cowardly peace is filled with fear. It avoids conflict by evasion and compromise. Cowardly peace is a great temptation for all of us today. We feel “established” and settled in American life, and we like it. We’d rather not lose our privileges or change the way things are, so we’re ready to follow Christ less zealously in order to hang on to our comforts. But this kind of peace never lasts. It’s a lie. And as our culture grows more hostile to the forms of serious Catholic faith, it will be impossible to maintain. ~ Charles J Chaput, #NFDB
1387:Sadeq, being human, has fantasies by the dozen, but he doesn’t dare permit himself to succumb to temptation. I’m not dead, he reasons; therefore, how can I be in Paradise? Therefore, this must be a false paradise, a temptation sent to lead me astray. Probably. Unless I am dead, because Allah, peace be unto him, considers a human soul separated from its body to be dead. But if that’s so, isn’t uploading a sin? In which case, this can’t be Paradise because I am a sinner. Besides which, this whole setup is so puerile! ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
1388:Though I love you to the core of my being, so thoroughly that every cell comprising me aches to be near you, I must accept that we can never be together. For our existence parallels the sun and the moon—a temptation in constant, beautiful view, yet if the sun were ever to kiss the moon it would devour the heavenly orb whole. Oh, my darling, if only I were the moon! Then I would dare taste your lips and be happy for my last and final joy! But alas, I am the sun, and I will not venture to destroy the one I love. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
1389:With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
1390:I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the way with Osteen to the idea that God wants you to have this big house and so on, the nature of American religion right now, the fact that it is so non-denominational and post-denominational, the most successful churches have to be run more like businesses than ever before. I think that just exposes Christians to a constant temptation to think about the ministry more as a business than they sometimes should. ~ Ross Douthat, #NFDB
1391:There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). The key to balance is seeking God’s will for me in this season, and not spending time on assignments meant for other people. Overcommitting myself is always a temptation. But with God’s wisdom and an updated list of all my commitments, I get ongoing reality checks that help me make wise decisions. And although I’m not really good at math, I know that a cup and a half of something will never fit in a one-cup container. ~ Renee Swope, #NFDB
1392:"With any major decision there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it ...is right now. Don't give up when the pressure mounts. Certainly don't go to that being who is bent on your destruction of your happiness. Face your doubts. Master your fears. 'Cast not away therefore your confidence.' Stay the course and see the beauty of life unfold for you. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1393:Still indomitable was the reply—“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1394:he lacked something very important: faith. He believed in the Almighty, sure. He even believed in the Holy Trinity. That was not the issue. The issue was that he couldn’t control his ambitions. He had a very weak spirit and refused to give the control over to God. And because of that, he found himself involved in things that the church could never agree with. He constantly gave in to temptation. He was full of pride. He only thought of himself and how he benefited in every situation. Quite simply, he was a lost soul. ~ Robbie Cheuvront, #NFDB
1395:Mindfulness is the willingness to rest in that natural state of awareness, resisting the temptation to judge whatever emotion comes up, and therefore neither opposing or getting carried away with a feeling. Meditation is simply the exercise that is going to give you the best conditions to practice being mindful of these emotions. And headspace is the result of applying this approach. Headspace does not mean being free from emotions, but rather existing in a place where you are at ease with whatever emotion is present. ~ Andy Puddicombe, #NFDB
1396:Wow," I said, since it was all I could think of to say. "Wow. That's some outfit." When you've got a big guy wearing Lycra it doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination. I resisted the temptation to ask Eric to turn around.
"I don't believe I could be convincing as a queen," Eric said, "but I decided this sent such a mixed signal, almost anything was possible." He fluttered his eyelashes at me. Eric was definitely enjoying this.
"Oh, yes," I said, trying to find somewhere else to look. (Living Dead in Dallas) ~ Charlaine Harris,#NFDB
1397:And the Word that had most recently come from the mouth of God was, “This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased.” Identity. It’s always God’s first move. Before we do anything wrong and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God’s own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school—they all have a go at telling us who we are. But only God can do that. Everything else is temptation. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1398:What Satan offered Christ in the temptation in the wilderness, Christ refused. But Christ did not refuse the offer because He didn’t want what was offered. He didn’t want it on those terms, but the reason He had come down to earth was to obtain those very kingdoms. He refused the tempter’s offer because He was planning to knock him down and take the kingdoms of men from him. “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house” (Mk. 3:27). ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1399:Will you regret letting him kiss you if you compare his kiss to your husband’s your whole life? Or was it more than a kiss? That is why the church expects purity. It isn’t because they don’t understand temptation, or even that they don’t understand how wonderful a budding relationship can be. Including the stolen kisses. No. They understand all too well how good it feels and how seductive desire can be. The Lord expects you to remain pure for other reasons. Your body is a temple and should be for you and your husband only. ~ Kari Trumbo, #NFDB
1400:Jane exerts what little control she has as an otherwise politically and socially powerless woman of no means through her voice of sensitivity and longing and sharp wit. As she finds her voice, Jane’s journey to selfhood is assisted by her resisting the natural temptation to become like the people whose love she desires but does not receive. She refuses to become like her cruel aunt or her tyrannical cousin John or her spoiled girl cousins. Yet, at the same time, like any little child, she wishes to be loved by them. ~ Karen Swallow Prior, #NFDB
1401:Lord, lead me not into temptation, and when there leave me not there; for unless thou hold me fast I feel I must, I shall decline, and prove an apostate after all." There is enough tinder in the hearts of the best men in the world to light a fire that shall burn to the lowest hell, unless God should quench the sparks as they fall. There is enough corruption, depravity, and wickedness in the heart of the most holy man that is now alive to damn his soul to all eternity, if free and sovereign grace does not prevent. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1402:[On how she goes about trying to live authentically] Well really listening to my point of view and if I am on a set, say, that doesn't really value a woman's point of view, regardless of how they feel, continuing to give my point of view and try to find a way to be heard and not diminishing myself because other people are diminishing me. Because that, I think, is the worst temptation that, you know, you judge yourself by how others are judging you, and to fall into that trap is to walk into the realm of self-annihilation. ~ Jennifer Beals, #NFDB
1403:For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead - out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need - we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory - a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture. ~ Rolf Potts, #NFDB
1404:Some there are who resign themselves, but with certain reservation; they do not trust fully in God and therefore they try to provide for themselves. Others, again, at first offer all, but afterward are assailed by temptation and return to what they have renounced, thereby making no progress in virtue. These will not reach the true liberty of a pure heart nor the grace of happy friendship with Me unless they first make a full resignation and a daily sacrifice of themselves. Without this no fruitful union lasts nor will last. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
1405:I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1406:At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion—that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms. Moral ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1407:I knew you'd be wet," he whispered, and gave in to temptation, biting her ear.
She quivered. "Now I want you to spread your legs for me. Just a little bit. That's right," he crooned in her ear. "That's perfect. You're perfect. Beautiful." He kissed the side of her neck, because he couldn't help it. He wanted his fingers inside her, wanted his cock inside her, but he couldn't have what he wanted. If he turned her, yanked off her pants and pushed her down on the floor he wouldn't stop, and this had to be for her and her alone. ~ Anne Stuart,#NFDB
1408:The Great Being unseen, but all-present, who in his beneficence desires only our welfare, watches the struggle between good and evil in our hearts, and waits to see whether we obey his voice, heard in the whispers of conscience, or lend an ear to the Spirit Evil, which seeks to lead us astray. Rough and steep is the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which temptation strews flowers. Then conscience whispers, "Do what you feel is right, obey me, and I will plant for you firm footing. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1409:It is natural for every man uninstructed to murmur at his condition, because, in the general infelicity of life, he feels his own miseries without knowing that they are common to all the rest of the species; and, therefore, though he will not be less sensible of pain by being told that others are equally tormented, he will at least be freed from the temptation of seeking, by perpetual changes, that ease which is no where to be found, and though his diseases still continue, he escapes the hazard of exasperating it by remedies. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1410:So what separates a season of failure from a lifetime of failure? First you must be willing to recognize hardship as an opportunity to learn, willing yourself to push through failure. Second, you must be careful to not succeed at the wrong things. You have to pay attention to passion and beware of the temptation of success. It’s not enough to be good at something; you must focus on what you are meant to do. And appreciate that your understanding of that, over time, just might change. So be ready to make more pivots along the way. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
1411:A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know. ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
1412:Just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
1413:Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.
"It makes me feel as if something had hit me," Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. "And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett,#NFDB
1414:Most of us would in fact find ourselves bored to tears after a few weeks of perpetual vacation—our thirst for flourishing is too strong to completely abandon the call to authority and vulnerability. But the technological culture has another, stronger trick up its sleeve—not total disengagement, but powerful and rewarding simulations of engagement. The real temptation for most of us is not complete apathy but activities that simulate meaningful action and meaningful risk without actually asking much of us or transforming much in us. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
1415:The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears…. ~ Arthur Koestler, #NFDB
1416:The generations are no better or worse than each other; their beliefs, mistakes and behavior depend on the historical and personal circumstances in which they grow up. It doesn’t take a prophet to predict that people will be blinded again, and more than once, by false teaching, will yield to the temptation of endowing certain individuals with superhuman qualities and glorify them, raise them up on a pedestal and then cast them back down again. Later generations will say that they were fools, and yet they will be exactly the same. ~ Vladimir Voinovich, #NFDB
1417:Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a spiritual being. His usual mode of temptation is not an obvious evil but to an apparent good. The commonest forms of devil-inspired worship do not take place furtively at black masses with decapitated cats but flourish under the bright lights of acclaim and glory, in a swirl of organ music. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1418:We are assailed by the temptation of the love of money. If you wish to acquire riches ? they are the bait of the fishers hook ? by greed, by trafficking, by violence, by ruse or by excessive manual work that deprives you of leisure for the service of God ? in a word by any other means ? if you have desired to pile up gold or silver, remember what the Gospel says, 'Fool! They will snatch your soul away during the night! Who will get your hoard' (cf. Lk. 12:20)? Again, 'He piles up money without knowing to whom it will go' (Ps. 39:6). ~ Pachomius the Great, #NFDB
1419:The modern expectation is that there will be equality in all things in the couple—which means, at heart, an equality of suffering. But calibrating grief to ensure an equal dosage is no easy task: misery is experienced subjectively, and there is always a temptation for each party to form a sincere yet competitive conviction that, in truth, his or her life really is more cursed--in ways that the partner seems uninclined to acknowledge or atone for. It takes a superhuman wisdom to avoid the consoling conclusion that one has the harder life. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1420:Every kingdom work, whether publicly performed or privately endeavored, partakes of the kingdom's imperishable character. Every honest intention, every stumbling word of witness, every resistance of temptation, every motion of repentance, every gesture of concern, every routine engagement, every motion of worship, every struggle towards obedience, every mumbled prayer, everything, literally, which flows out of our faith-relationship with the Ever-Living One, will find its place in the ever-living heavenly order which will dawn at his coming. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1421:God’s ways may seem strange to us, but his ways do not have to live up to our standards or our analysis. He is who he is, and we are who we are. He is beyond error, perfect in all his ways. If his ways confuse or disappoint you, guard against the temptation to re-create him into a god you like better. You and I are to humble ourselves before him and seek to conform to his standard, not the other way around. He is sovereign and good, compassionate and merciful. If we do not accept God in his wholeness, we will never experience our own. ~ Jennifer Rothschild, #NFDB
1422:It takes a pretty strong person, a rather unusual young person, to stand up to ridicule and refuse to give in to temptation. There are so many things today in modern music, on television, and in the movies that portray a life that is nowhere near the life the Lord would have us live. Consequently, we cannot afford to turn to the radio, television, or Hollywood to take our cues about what is right and what is wrong. It is scary to realize that the more we are exposed to Hollywood's version of life, the more we gradually begin to accept it. ~ Robert L Millet, #NFDB
1423:Though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, for years my deepest fear was that I was a weakling, powerless to temptation, and that I—the victim—would break under pressure every time. I was a victim, all right—a victim to my own erroneous belief system. Satan quickly detected my fears and preyed on them, doing everything he could to confirm what I believed. Once again we see a huge reason why we must believe we are who God says we are and that we can do all things through Christ. Satan will always discourage and demoralize us if we don’t. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1424:It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action. ~ Arthur Goldberg, #NFDB
1425:It would be wrong of me to suppose that just because I can form private mental images, that everyone can. As Francis Galton and William James long ago showed, a small proportion of adults-and some of these extremely intelligent-are unable to form such visual images. Berkeley's point is that it would be equally arrogant for these non-thinkers or non-image formers to claim that everyone is like them in the relevant respect. The temptation to pontificate in that way reveals a narrowness and unwillingness to see the world from another perspective. ~ David Berman, #NFDB
1426:In regard to the memory, we must unlearn a great deal: here we meet with the greatest temptation to assume the existence of a 'soul,' which, irrespective of time, reproduces and recognises again and again, etc. What I have experienced, however, continues to live 'in the memory'; I have nothing to do with it when memory 'comes,' my will is inactive in regard to it, as in the case of the coming and going of a thought. Something happens, of which I become conscious: now something similar comes — who has called it forth? Who has awakened it? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
1427:Though we run across exceptions, philosophical novels where explanation holds interest, the temptation to explain is one that should almost always be resisted. A good writer can get anything at all across through action and dialogue, and if he can think of no powerful reason to do otherwise, he should probably leave explanation to his reviewers and critics. The writer should especially avoid comment on what his characters are feeling, or at very least should be sure he understands the common objection summed up in the old saw "Show, don't tell. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
1428:In Simon's entire life, he had never experienced such potent craving as he had the moment he had seen Annabelle half-undressed in the meadow. His entire body had been flooded with the urge to dismount his horse, seize Annabelle in his arms, and carry her to the nearest soft patch of grass he could find. He could not imagine a more unholy temptation than the sight of her voluptuous body, the expanse of silken skin tinted in shades of cream and pink, the sun-streaked golden brown hair. She had looked so enchantingly mortified, blushing everywhere. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
1429:Let our hearts admit, “I am poor and weak. Satan is too subtle, too cunning, too powerful; he watches constantly for advantages over my soul. The world presses in upon me with all sorts of pressures, pleas, and pretences. My own corruption is violent, tumultuous, enticing, and entangling. As it conceives sin, it wars within me and against me. Occasions and opportunities for temptation are innumerable. No wonder I do not know how deeply involved I have been with sin. Therefore, on God alone will I rely for my keeping. I will continually look to Him. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1430:Restrooms at gas stations were an unpleasant and shocking surprise; I had never considered the serious drawbacks of such lazily-cleaned rooms. I was completely unable to ignore the filth, and wasted a burst of power to turn the sink, floors and porcelain toilet into sparkling, clean examples of their kind before using the facility. I felt that was a much less judgmental response than simply blowing the place off the face of the Earth, which was also a distinct temptation, especially when the storekeeper overcharged me for a bottle of cold water. ~ Rachel Caine, #NFDB
1431:I could see beauty in a moral code that emphasized self-control, resistance to temptation, cultivation of one’s higher, nobler self, and negation of the self’s desires. I could see the dark side of this ethic too: once you allow visceral feelings of disgust to guide your conception of what God wants, then minorities who trigger even a hint of disgust in the majority (such as homosexuals or obese people) can be ostracized and treated cruelly. The ethic of divinity is sometimes incompatible with compassion, egalitarianism, and basic human rights. ~ Jonathan Haidt, #NFDB
1432:It is very important that you should choose the person you will marry and stay with that person. There are many people now who believe in serial love, loving one person after another. I don’t think that is good for our mental health. I think we should get it over with. Love is like measles, you know. You only get it once in your lifetime and you are immune forever. I am very happy to say that is what happened to me. I am completely immune to any temptation. All men who have passed my life after I got married might as well have been sticks of furniture. ~ Miriam, #NFDB
1433:Jesus has many lovers of His kingdom of heaven, but he has few bearers of His Cross. Many desire His consolation, but few desire His tribulation. He finds many comrades in eating and drinking, but He finds few hands who will be with Him in His abstinence and fastingBut those who love Jesus purely for Himself, and not for their own profit or convenience, bless Him as heartily in temptation and tribulation and in all other adversities as they do in time of consolation. And if He never sent them consolation, they would still bless and praise Him. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
1434:God knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and indestructible honesty until now—and now, under the very first big and real temptation, I—Edward, it is my belief that this town’s honesty is as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours. It is a mean town, a hard, stingy town, and hasn’t a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
1435:Deathbed confession or mere ordinance work do not change man’s nature. This is the reason Satan’s plan to force everyone to be good would have failed, for there could never be a returning to the presence of the Eternal Father without a testing in the face of opposites and temptation and without the continuous choosing of the highest good over lesser goods and over evil. Any other approach to salvation ignores this process of growth and turns it all into some kind of an arbitrary and awesome mystery that, to many, is the hallmark of spirituality. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1436:I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1437:Whoever has the power to label others as evil is automatically, or reflexively, the good person. Good people label bad people as evil. And once you do that, then it demonizes them. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't sit down at the table with the devil and say, "Okay, let's work this out." What you want to do is destroy evil. Every Catholic kid every night says, or should say, "Lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil." And so you've got to go to God to help you deal with evil rather than your State Department or your negotiators. ~ Philip Zimbardo, #NFDB
1438:An executive consulted me about a young man whom he wished to advance in his company. “But,” he explained, “he cannot be trusted with important secret information and I’m sorry, for otherwise I would make him my administrative assistant. He has all the other necessary qualifications, but he talks too much, and without meaning to do so divulges matters of a private and important nature.” Upon analysis I found that he “talked too much” simply because of an inferiority feeling. To compensate for it he succumbed to the temptation of parading his knowledge. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1439:Our great Pattern hath showed us what our deportment ought to be in all suggestions and temptations. When the devil showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," to tempt Him withal, He did not stand and look upon them, viewing their glory, and pondering their empire.... but instantly, without stay, He cries, "Get thee hence, Satan." Meet thy temptation in its entrance with thoughts of faith concerning Christ on the cross; this will make it sink before thee. Entertain no parley, no dispute with it, if thou wouldst not enter into it. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1440:The three messianic temptations at the start of his public life, which on the face of it he conquered masterfully, took place when he was weak: he met them after his forty days’ fast in the wilderness, “and afterward he was hungry” (Mt 4:2). Instead of fortifying himself he weakens himself in view of the encounter with Satan, for he must be able to taste the full attack of demonic temptation in order to know its true power and plausibility. This christological locus vindicates Paul’s maxim: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
1441:Faced with the prospect of following a convention, there’s a great temptation for designers to try reinventing the wheel instead, largely because they feel (not incorrectly) that they’ve been hired to do something new and different, not the same old thing. Not to mention the fact that praise from peers, awards, and high-profile job offers are rarely based on criteria like “best use of conventions.” Occasionally, time spent reinventing the wheel results in a revolutionary new rolling device. But usually it just amounts to time spent reinventing the wheel. ~ Steve Krug, #NFDB
1442:There is always a temptation for governments to pursue science with particular commercial aims in view. But this rarely works. Had there been a stated purpose to quantum physics in the 1920s, it would have been deemed a failure. And yet quantum physics has given us the transistor, the laser, the basis of nanotechnology, and much else besides. Building a capacity for advanced technology is not like planning production in a socialist economy, but more like growing a rock garden. Planting, watering, and weeding are more appropriate than five-year plans. ~ W Brian Arthur, #NFDB
1443:Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don't care what those themes are- they're yours to uncover and stand behind-so long as, at the very least, there is courage. ~ Marisha Pessl, #NFDB
1444:Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths. One could count on V to always choose the honest (and, often, self-effacing) way forward. While most scientists connived to publish in the most prestigious journals and get their names out there, V maintained that our only obligation was to be authentic to the scientific story and to tell it uncompromisingly. I’d never met someone so successful who was also so committed to goodness. V was an actual paragon. Instead ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
1445:That’s to encourage her, in everything she wants courageously to do, but to include in that genuine appreciation the fact of her femininity: to recognize the importance of having a family and children and to forego the temptation to denigrate or devalue that in comparison to accomplishment of personal ambition or career. It’s not for nothing that the Holy Mother and Infant is a divine image—as we just discussed. Societies that cease to honour that image—that cease to see that relationship as of transcendent and fundamental importance—also cease to be. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1446:Believing in the divinity of Jesus is the heart of Christian orthodoxy. But believing in the viability of Jesus’s ideas makes Christianity truly radical. Divorcing Jesus from his ideas—especially divorcing Jesus from his political ideas—has been a huge problem that’s plagued the church from the fourth century onward. The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas—thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1447:I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy patriotism a little too far. For liberals the temptation is to say the purpose of politics is to straightforwardly bring the kingdom of God to Earth. For conservatives, I talk about Glenn Beck, the temptation is more apocalyptic and messianic, it's the temptation to say we did have a covenant with God, a literal covenant beginning with the Founding, and we are, like Israel in the Old Testament, falling away from it. ~ Ross Douthat, #NFDB
1448:That’s to encourage her, in everything she wants courageously to do, but to include in that genuine appreciation the fact of her femininity: to recognize the importance of having a family and children and to forego the temptation to denigrate or devalue that in comparison to accomplishment of personal ambition or career. It’s not for nothing that the Holy Mother and Infant is a divine image—as we just discussed. Societies that cease to honour that image—that cease to see that relationship as of transcendent and fundamental importance—also cease to be. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1449:If there is something that you have to do, resist the temptation to do it under duress. Ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that would happen if I didn't do this?" And if you can get away with not doing it at all, don't do it. And then imagine what would it feel like to have this done. Spend a day or two, if you can, just 15 minutes here, 5 minutes here, 2 minutes here, here and here, imagining it completed in a way that pleases you! And then, the next time you decide that you're going to take action about it, the action is going to be a whole lot easier. ~ Esther Hicks, #NFDB
1450:Even after all our frailties and failures, Christ Jesus can hardly wait to acknowledge us before the very angels of God. If He is that unashamed of us in all our imperfections, how can we be ashamed of Him, our Redeemer and Deliverer? So don’t duck your head in shame under the coffee table. At one time or another, all of us have faced the temptation to shrink away from openly acknowledging Christ. But I’ve learned one of the best ways to get over our attacks of shame: do it over and over until it loses its intimidation. The more we practice, the easier it gets! ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1451:The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style; he is even capable of something approaching a purely aesthetic emotion. But he fears this aesthetic emotion as an insinuating distraction from his chief business in life: the sober consideration of the all-important problem of conduct. Art is a temptation, a seduction, a Lorelei, and the Good Man may safely have traffic with it when it is broken to moral uses--in other words, when its innocence is pumped out of it, and it is purged of gusto. ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1452:A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask. An Elephant in her disguise as a human princess, a Scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch’s hat, a Wizard’s showbiz display, a cleric’s stole, a scholar’s gown, a soldier’s dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know? ~ Gregory Maguire, #NFDB
1453:I glanced out of my window at the grime and decay of Temptation, comparing it to Shannon’s golden world, good ole Willow’s Corner. In her pricey neighborhood, red brick colonials stood tall, capped with a thick down of milk-white snow. Chimney smoke made the quiet setting look warm and friendly—like a f*cking Hallmark card. But I knew better. Behind those fancy doors, with their brass knockers and deceitful doormats that had the nerve to say, ‘Welcome,’ were the same vicious snobs who’d looked down their noses at me earlier." -- Trace Dawson, Within Temptation ~ Tanya Holmes, #NFDB
1454:If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
1455:I suppose that’s a Slavophile idea.’ ‘No: today’s Slavophiles would disown it. These days the people have grown more intelligent. But you went even further: you believed that Roman Catholicism was no longer Christianity. You asserted that Rome was preaching a Christ who had succumbed to the third temptation of the Devil, and that by proclaiming to the entire world that Christ without an earthly kingdom cannot prevail on earth, Catholicism was thereby preaching the Antichrist and hence had destroyed the entire Western world. You specifically pointed out that ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, #NFDB
1456:Fathers and mothers are too absorbed in business and housekeeping to study their children, and cherish that sweet and natural confidence which is a child's surest safeguard, and a parent's subtlest power. So the young hearts hide trouble or temptation till the harm is done, and mutual regret comes too late. Happy the boys and girls who tell all things freely to father or mother, sure of pity, help, and pardon; and thrice happy the parents who, out of their own experience, and by their own virtues, can teach and uplift the souls for which they are responsible. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
1457:For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake. ~ Ellen Willis, #NFDB
1458:I felt I had a very innocent childhood and I feel privileged by that. But as an adult, I know that there were people who didn't have that. There are a lot of teens who haven't had as easy a childhood as me, and having literature that explores these "darker" parts helps relieve the burden and stress they may be feeling. As a writer, there is often a temptation to draw back when we write for teens - to preserve their innocence. But the reality is, if someone has already had that innocence taken in their life, then not writing about it is just brushing it under the rug. ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
1459:On Mr. Gay
Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;
In Wit, a Man; Simplicity, a Child:
With native Humour temp'ring virtuous Rage,
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age:
Above Temptation, in a low Estate, 5
And uncorrupted, ev'n among the Great:
A safe Companion, and an easy Friend,
Unblam'd thro' Life, lamented in thy End.
These are Thy Honours! not that here thy Bust
Is mix'd with Heroes, or with Kings thy dust; 10
But that the Worthy and the Good shall say,
Striking their pensive bosomsHere
lies GAY.
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
1460:Anthony of Egypt.” Recalling everything Simone had since filled him in on, he added, “He was a hermit who lived in the desert and, according to Scripture, wrestled with demons who tried to get him to succumb to worldly temptation and renounce God.” “Did he win the wrestling match?” “Legend has it that he did.” “Just in case I ever need to know,” Taylor said, bemused, “how the hell do you beat a demon?” “See that staff, with the odd handle?” Lucas said, trying to recall what Simone had once told him. “He raised it to the sky and the Lord sent His power through it. ~ Robert Masello, #NFDB
1461:Religion is not a perpetual moping over good books. Religion is not even prayer, praise, holy ordinances — these are necessary to religion — no man can be religious without them. But religion, I repeat, is, mainly and chiefly the glorifying God amid the duties and trials of the world; the guiding of our course amid adverse winds and currents of temptation by the star-light of duty and the compass of divine truth, the bearing up manfully, wisely, courageously, for the honor of Christ, our great Leader, in the conflict of life. ~ John Caird, Religion in Common Life (1856) pp. 24-25, #NFDB
1462:Minutes later the waitress brought back a cup the size of a soup bowl filled with steaming chocolate-flavored coffee and topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Tianna realized she hadn't eaten anything since the bite of muffin early in the morning.
She sipped the brew, enjoying the rich, sweet taste, and listened to Serena recite a poem about her demon lover. It made Tianna think more than ever that Serena was some kind of witch or worse. How could she know so much about temptation and choosing between good and evil? The words sent chills through Tianna. ~ Lynne Ewing,#NFDB
1463:The capacity of the rational mind to deceive, manipulate, scheme, trick, falsify, minimize, mislead, betray, prevaricate, deny, omit, rationalize, bias, exaggerate and obscure is so endless, so remarkable, that centuries of pre-scientific thought, concentrating on clarifying the nature of moral endeavour, regarded it as positively demonic. This is not because of rationality itself, as a process. That process can produce clarity and progress. It is because rationality is subject to the single worst temptation—to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1464:When conditions are great, things are easy, there aren't any distractions; that too is when most everyone else does great. It's not until situations are difficult, when problems come up and temptation is great, that you get to prove your worthiness for progress. As Jim Rohn would say, "Don't wish it were easier; wish you were better."
When you hit the wall in your disciplines, routines, rhythms, and consistency, realize that's when you are separating yourself from your old self, scaling that wall, and finding your new powerful, triumphant, and victorious self. ~ Darren Hardy,#NFDB
1465:The capacity of the rational mind to deceive, manipulate, scheme, trick, falsify, minimize, mislead, betray, prevaricate, deny, omit, rationalize, bias, exaggerate and obscure is so endless, so remarkable, that centuries of pre-scientific thought, concentrating on clarifying the nature of moral endeavour, regarded it as positively demonic. This is not because of rationality itself, as a process. That process can produce clarity and progress. It is because rationality is subject to the single worst temptation—to raise what it knows now to the status of an absolute. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1466:Watch your hearts. This was Christ's watchword to his disciples: "Watch, therefore" (Matt. 24:42). The heart will incline us to sin, before we are aware. A subtle heart needs a watchful eye. Watch your thoughts, your affections. The heart has a thousand doors to run out from. Oh, keep close watch on your souls! Stand continually on your watch-towers (Hab. 2:1). When you have prayed against sin, watch against temptation. Most wickedness in the world is committed for lack of watchfulness. Watchfulness maintains godliness. It is the edging which keeps piety from fraying. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
1467:If you do not feel deserving of happiness, consciously or subconsciously, or if you have accepted the idea that happiness is somehow wrong or cannot last, you will not respond appropriately when happiness comes knocking at your door in the form of romantic love. No matter how much you may have waited and cried, you will not welcome love when it arrives-you will find a way to sabotage it. What a challenge to resist this temptation! What an opportunity for true spiritual growth and transformation-to defy your negative feelings and honor the gift that life offers you! ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
1468:The moral that Plato wished to draw out is that no man can resist the temptation of being able to steal and kill at will. All men are corruptible. Morality is a social construct imposed from the outside. A man may appear to be moral in public to maintain his reputation for integrity and honesty, but once he possesses the power of invisibility, the use of such power would be irresistible. (Some believe that this morality tale was the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which a ring that grants the wearer invisibility is also a source of evil.) ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
1469:Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 40:006:010 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 40:006:011 Give us this day our daily bread. 40:006:012 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 40:006:013 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. 40:006:014 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: 40:006:015 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1470:One and sixpence!" repeated his son contemptously.
"Yes, sir" returned John, "one and sicpence. When I was your age, I had never seen so much money, in a heap. A shilling of it in case of accidents - the mare casting a shoe, or the like of that. The other sixpence is to spend in the diversions of London; and the diversion I recommend is to go to the top of the Monument, and sitting there. There's no temptation there, sir - no drink - no young women - no bad characters of any sort - nothing but imagnation. Theat's the way I enjoyed myself when I was your age, sir. ~ Charles Dickens,#NFDB
1471:Patrice proceeded from the face of the world to the grave and smiling faces of the young women. Sometimes he was amazed by this universe they had created around him. Friendship and trust, sun and white houses, scarcely heeded nuances, here felicities were born intact, and he could measure their precise nuance. The House above the World, the said among themselves, was not a house of pleasure, it was a house of happiness. Patrice knew it was true when night fell and they all accepted, with the last breeze on their faces, the human and dangerous temptation to be utterly unique. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1472:The censor pretends he is protecting tender hearts, shielding children from sex and violence, keeping the righteous in the right path, guarding against temptation, preserving virtue. How? by burning books, tearing out tongues, stretching necks, stoning women; through torture and imprisonment; by threats of violence against the victim’s friends and family; by force-feeding his own people a philosophy not only false and wicked now but false and wicked the day it was first announced by some imaginary lord and used to purchase or preserve his privileges and hoodwink the world. ~ William H Gass, #NFDB
1473:They recognize the temptation that we individually and churches corporately face to live “above” our places, remaining essentially disconnected from the desires and disappointments of our closest neighbors. They write, “We think there is a deep connection between Adam and Eve’s calling to care for a specific place, and God’s instruction not to eat from the tree of knowledge. After all, grasping Godlike knowledge at the expense of relationship is a way of attempting to transcend your boundaries. It is a way of avoiding both your limitations and your responsibilities.”15 ~ Jen Pollock Michel, #NFDB
1474:In Christian tradition, beauty, goodness, and truth are known as “transcendentals,” linked to the three core human abilities to feel, to wish, and to think. Jesus refers to them in the Great Commandment when he talks about the mind, the soul, and the heart, and inducements to take the wrong path with each of the transcendentals formed the core of his temptation scene in the Gospels. While Barron is convinced that Catholic Christianity represents the fullness of all three, he’s equally convinced that the right way to open up the Catholic world to someone is with its beauty. ~ Robert E Barron, #NFDB
1475:Still indomitable was the reply: ‘I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad – as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
1476:There are some actions from which an escape is a godsend both for the man who escapes and for those about him. Man, as soon as he gets back his consciousness of right, is thankful to the Divine mercy for the escape. As we know that a man often succumbs to temptation, however much he say resist it, we also know that Providence often intercedes and saves him in spite of himself. How all this happens—how far a man is free and how far a creature of circumstances—how far free-will comes into play and where fate enters on the scene—all this is a mystery and will remain a mystery. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
1477:When dealing with a difficult person, all that matters from a spiritual standpoint is how you react and treat the person. It's not about getting the other person to change or agree with you. Your spiritual growth is all about the way that YOU deal with the relationship, the person, and the situation. Even if the situation would justify you acting harshly, resist this temptation. Ask for heaven to purify and uplift your thoughts and feelings so that everything you do and say is aligned with Divine Love. This is the path and purpose of the lightworker. This is why you are here. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
1478:One of the most amazing commentaries on the fallen human nature to be found in all the Word of God is right here in this passage. After one thousand years of a perfect environment, with an abundance of material possessions and spiritual instruction for everyone, no crime, no war, no external temptation to sin, with the personal presence of all the resurrected saints and even Christ Himself, and with Satan and all his demons bound in the abyss, there are still a multitude of unsaved men and women on earth who are ready to rebel against the Lord the first time they get a chance.2 ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
1479:You will, at times, be the most selfish asshole you can possibly imagine. You will step out of your own integrity. You will do things you thought you would never do. The temptation is there to let your actions define your being. To carry the weight of your own failure and to live in a state of perpetual penance. Do not. Learn the art of self-forgiveness. Know that there is a difference between acting like an asshole and BEING an asshole – and it has to do with the amount of time you spend in the space and what you do once you realize you’ve gone there. Make good choices here. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc, #NFDB
1480:The preacher always has to guard himself against the terrible temptation to be a ‘character’. People like a ‘character’, and if a man has certain elements in him that tend to make him a character—something out of the ordinary, something which people regard as attractive—he has to be careful. His danger is to pander to this and to play up to it; and in the end he is just calling attention to himself. Some men like to be quaint or odd or different, and to get people to talk about them. This is the danger, so beware of this; and, again, especially watch your strong points. Let ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
1481:Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror! ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1482:Thanks to the knowledge revolution, we have more information and more choices than ever before. But we also have more decisions to make and less time to make them as the pace of life picks up greater speed with each so-called labor-saving technological advance. The boundaries between home and the workplace are eroding as work reaches people by cell phone and e-mail, anywhere anytime. The rules are also eroding and the temptation to cut corners and bend ethical standards is powerful. Everywhere people are finding it hard to set and maintain boundaries. No is today’s biggest challenge. ~ William Ury, #NFDB
1483:When the soul adores Him Who guides it through mortal life, when it distinguishes His sign at every turn of the trail, painted on the boulder and notched in the fir trunk, when every page in the book of one’s personal fate bears His watermark, how can one doubt that He will also preserve us through all eternity? So what can stop one from effecting the transition? What can help us to resist the intolerable temptation? What can prevent us from yielding to the burning desire for merging in God? We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, #NFDB
1484:9 “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. •Amen.] 14 “For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. 15 But if you don't forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1485:Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath— "'The horror! The horror! ~ Joseph Conrad, #NFDB
1486:It is neither easy nor agreeable to dredge this abyss of viciousness, and yet I think it must be done, because what could be perpetrated yesterday could be attempted again tomorrow, could overwhelm us and our children. One is tempted to turn away with a grimace and close one's mind: this is a temptation one must resist. In fact, the existence of the death squads had a meaning, a message: 'We, the master race, are your destroyers, but you are no better than we are; if we so wish, and we do so wish, we can destroy not only your bodies, but also your souls, just as we have destroyed ours. ~ Primo Levi, #NFDB
1487:It would not fall in with that gradual development of life and history by which the Father works, and which must be the way to breed free, God-loving wills. It would be violent, theatrical, therefore poor in nature and in result, — not God-like in any way. Everything in God’s doing comes harmoniously with and from all the rest. Son of Man, his history shall be a man’s history, shall be The Man’s history. Shall that begin with an exception? Yet it might well be a temptation to Him who longed to do all he could for men. He was the Son of God: why should not the sons of God know it? ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
1488:More mature doesn't have to mean more complicated As things progress, don't be afraid to resist bloat. The temptation will be to scale up. But it doesn't have to be that way. Just because something gets older and more mature, doesn't mean it needs to get more complicated. You don't have to become an outer space pen that writes upside down. Sometimes it's ok to just be a pencil. You don't need to be a swiss-army knife. You can just be a screwdriver. You don't need to build a diving watch that's safe at 5,000 meters if your customers are land-lovers who just want to know what the time is. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1489:Her skirts, sleeves, collar, and hat saw to it that none of the young ruffians of the Leased Territories would have the opportunity to invade her body space with their eyes, and lest her distinctive face prove too much of a temptation, she wore a veil too...
The veil offered Nell protection from unwanted scrutiny. Many New Atlantis career women also used the veil as a way of meeting the world on their own terms, ensuring that they were judged on their own merits and not on their appearance. It served a protective function as well, bouncing back the harmful rays of the sun... ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
1490:It's not a matter of temptation!" Hirou said. "It's..." he trailed off for a moment. It wasn't that he couldn't find the words. It was that the concepts didn't exist in this world. What he wanted to say was that he had a pretty good idea what sort of behavior got you listed as a villain, in the great TV Tropes wiki of the universe; and he'd had a worried eye on his own character sheet since the day he'd realized what he'd gotten himself into; and he absolutely positively wasn't going to go Dark Messiah, Knight Templar, Well Intentioned Extremist, or for that matter Lawful Stupid. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky, #NFDB
1491: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 truly "practical" thing to do is to resist the temptation to engage immediately and to "wait and see" by means of a patient, critical analysis. ~ Slavoj i ek, #NFDB
1492:Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
The horror! The horror! ~ Joseph Conrad,#NFDB
1493:In many ways, large profits are even more insidious than large losses in terms of emotional destabilization. I think it's important not to be emotionally attached to large profits. I've certainly made some of my worst trades after long periods of winning. When you're on a big winning streak, there's a temptation to think that you're doing something special, which will allow you to continue to propel yourself upward. You start to think that you can afford to make shoddy decisions. You can imagine what happens next. As a general rule, losses make you strong and profits make you weak. ~ William Eckhardt, #NFDB
1494:Kalina remained paralyzed in her seat. “Oh, crap. Aaron was a vampire.” She straightened up. Remain calm, Kalina. Breathe. “You're not going to eat me, are you?”
“No,” said Stuart. “Not all vampires feed on humans. I choose not to. I drink Vampire Wine.”
“Vampire Wine.” Kalina put the pieces together. “Jaegar...I thought he was kidding...”
“And Aaron drank Vampire Wine, too. To avoid succumbing to temptation. To avoid drinking blood whenever he got too...excited....”
Kalina's eyes widened. “So you mean...”
“Vampire Wine wasn't the problem, Kalina. It was the only solution. ~ Kailin Gow,#NFDB
1495:Did she imagine the fire that suddenly sparked in Lucien’s mismatched eyes? Did she imagine the way his nostrils flared in awareness? Now or never. Licking her lips, never removing her gaze from him, she eased into a sensual bump and grind and made her way toward his table. Halfway, she stopped and motioned for him to join her with a crook of her finger. He stood in front of her a moment later, as if he’d been pulled by an invisible chain, unable to resist. Up close, he was six-feet-six of muscle and danger. Pure temptation. Her lips edged into a slow smile. “We meet at last, Flowers. ~ Gena Showalter, #NFDB
1496:Men don’t open up because they are prideful and self-protective. The lonely, isolated man is that way because he won’t make himself known to others. Disclosure of self is the currency of intimacy. It’s what our wives want and what true friendship demands. You don’t have to spill your guts to everybody or anybody, but God will get you to the place where you know you need to do it with somebody. The temptation to keep it all inside is the downside of being wired as a protector. He loves us too much to leave us alone. You will never fulfill your potential as a man of God going it alone. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
1497:The Devil, dearest daughter, is the instrument of My Justice to torment the souls who have miserably offended Me. And I have set him in this life to tempt and molest My creatures, not for My creatures to be conquered, but that they may conquer, proving their virtue, and receive from Me the glory of victory. And no one should fear any battle or temptation of the Devil that may come to him, because I have made My creatures strong, and have given them strength of will, fortified in the Blood of my Son, which will, neither Devil nor creature can move, because it is yours, given by Me. ~ Catherine of Siena, #NFDB
1498:If... God highly exalted Christ because He humbled Himself, suffered dishonour, was tempted and endured a shameful cross and death for our sake, how will He save, glorify and raise us up if we neither choose humility, nor show love to our fellows, nor gain our souls by enduring temptation (cf. Lk. 21:19), nor follow the saving Guide through the 'strait gate' and along the 'narrow way' leading to eternal life (Mt. 7:14)? To this end we were called, says Peter, the chief Apostle, ' Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps' (I Pet. 2:21). ~ Gregory Palamas, #NFDB
1499:It is a woeful thing to see souls beginning to chafe and grow disheartened because they find themselves still subject to imperfection after having made some attempt at leading a devout life, and well-nigh yielding to the temptation to give up in despair and fall back; but, on the other hand, there is an extreme danger surrounding those souls who, through the opposite temptation, are disposed to imagine themselves purified from all imperfection at the very outset of their purgation; who count themselves as full-grown almost before they are born, and seek to fly before they have wings. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
1500:If one of you sees, sometime, something unedifying and so much as goes on to pass it on and put it into the heart of another brother, in doing so you not only harm yourself but you harm your brother by putting one more little bit of knavery into his heart. Even if that brother has his mind set on prayer or some other noble activity, and the first arrives and furnishes him with something to prate about, he not only impedes what he ought to be doing, but brings a temptation on him. There is nothing graver or more deadly than this doing harm, not only to himself but also to his neighbor. ~ Dorotheus of Gaza, #NFDB
48 Integral Yoga
35 Christianity
24 Poetry
18 Philosophy
16 Occultism
15 Psychology
13 Yoga
4 Science
4 Fiction
3 Hinduism
2 Sufism
2 Mythology
2 Education
1 Thelema
1 Mysticism
1 Alchemy
26 Sri Aurobindo
20 The Mother
20 Nolini Kanta Gupta
17 Saint Augustine of Hippo
13 Aldous Huxley
12 Saint Teresa of Avila
10 Carl Jung
9 William Wordsworth
9 Satprem
7 Saint John of Climacus
6 Sri Ramakrishna
6 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
6 Anonymous
6 Aleister Crowley
5 H P Lovecraft
4 Swami Vivekananda
4 Jordan Peterson
3 Swami Krishnananda
3 Rudolf Steiner
2 Saint Francis of Assisi
2 Robert Browning
2 Plotinus
2 Jorge Luis Borges
2 Friedrich Nietzsche
13 The Perennial Philosophy
13 City of God
10 The Bible
9 Wordsworth - Poems
7 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
7 Letters On Yoga IV
6 The Way of Perfection
6 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
5 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
5 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
5 Lovecraft - Poems
4 The Practice of Psycho therapy
4 Mysterium Coniunctionis
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
3 The Study and Practice of Yoga
3 The Secret Doctrine
3 The Life Divine
3 Raja-Yoga
3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
3 Magick Without Tears
3 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
3 Essays Divine And Human
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Words Of Long Ago
2 The Synthesis Of Yoga
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Future of Man
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 Some Answers From The Mother
2 Savitri
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
2 On Education
2 Liber ABA
2 Letters On Yoga I
2 Let Me Explain
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 Dark Night of the Soul
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
2 Browning - Poems
2 Agenda Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 01
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
As he read in college the rationalistic Western philosophers of the nineteenth century, his boyhood faith in God and religion was unsettled. He would not accept religion on mere faith; he wanted demonstration of God. But very soon his passionate nature discovered that mere Universal Reason was cold and bloodless. His emotional nature, dissatisfied with a mere abstraction, required a concrete support to help him in the hours of temptation. He wanted an external power, a guru, who by embodying perfection in the flesh would still the commotion of his soul. Attracted by the magnetic personality of Keshab, he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became a singer in its choir. But in the Samaj he did not find the guru who could say that he had seen God.
In a state of mental conflict and torture of soul, Narendra came to Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. He was then eighteen years of age and had been in college two years. He entered the Master's room accompanied by some light-hearted friends. At Sri Ramakrishna's request he sang a few songs, pouring his whole soul into them, and the Master went into samadhi. A few minutes later Sri Ramakrishna suddenly left his seat, took Narendra by the hand, and led him to the screened verandah north of his room. They were alone. Addressing Narendra most tenderly, as if he were a friend of long acquaintance, the Master said: "Ah! You have come very late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait all these days? My ears are tired of hearing the futile words of worldly men. Oh, how I have longed to pour my spirit into the heart of someone fitted to receive my message!" He talked thus, sobbing all the time. Then, standing before Narendra with folded hands, he addressed him as Narayana, born on earth to remove the misery of humanity. Grasping Narendra's hand, he asked him to come again, alone, and very soon. Narendra was startled. "What is this I have come to see?" he said to himself. "He must be stark mad. Why, I am the son of Viswanath Dutta. How dare he speak this way to me?"
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Bring us through temptation!
Deliver us from Good and Evil!
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
can; do not yield to the temptation to give up the struggle and let
yourself fall into darkness. Persist, and one day you will realise
0.06 - Letters to a Young Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is always better to avoid the temptation.
One has only to persist with a calm confidence and the vital will
01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In one's own soul lies the very height and profundity of a god-head. Each soul by bringing out the note that is his, makes for the most wondrous symphony. Once a man knows what he is and holds fast to it, refusing to be drawn away by any necessity or temptation, he begins to uncover himself, to do what his inmost nature demands and takes joy in, that is to say, begins to create. Indeed there may be much difference in the forms that different souls take. But because each is itself, therefore each is grounded upon the fundamental equality of things. All our valuations are in reference to some standard or other set up with a particular end in view, but that is a question of the practical world which in no way takes away from the intrinsic value of the greatness of the soul. So long as the thing is there, the how of it does not matter. Infinite are the ways of manifestation and all of them the very highest and the most sublime, provided they are a manifestation of the soul itself, provided they rise and flow from the same level. Whether it is Agni or Indra, Varuna, Mitra or the Aswins, it is the same supreme and divine inflatus.
The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is borne out, effectuated only by the truth of the individual soul. When the individual soul becomes itself fully and integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. The individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspectBhava, a particular angle of vision of All. The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And for that the individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
01.03 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Souls Release, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And sweet temptations stole from beauty's realms
And sudden ecstasies from a world of bliss.
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. Nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fullness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer worlds of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fullness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realise the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental."
The neatness of the commentary cannot be improved upon. Only with regard to the "ironical ring" of which Huxley speaks, it has just to be pointed out, as he himself seems to understand, that the "we" referred to in the phrase does not mean humanity in general that 'splashes about in the lower ooze' but those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life.
01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,16
Our poet is too self-conscious, he himself feels that he has not the perfect voice. A Homer, even a Milton possesses a unity of tone and a wholeness of perception which are denied to the modern. To the modern, however, the old masters are not subtle enough, broad enough, psychological enough, let us say the word, spiritual enough. And yet the poetic inspiration, more than the religious urge, needs the injunction not to be busy with too many things, but to be centred upon the one thing needful, viz., to create poetically and not to discourse philosophically or preach prophetically. Not that it is impossible for the poet to swallow the philosopher and the prophet, metabolising them into the substance of his bone and marrow, of "the trilling wire in his blood", as Eliot graphically expresses. That perhaps is the consummation towards which poetry is tending. But at present, in Eliot, at least, the strands remain distinct, each with its own temper and rhythm, not fused and moulded into a single streamlined form of beauty. Our poet flies high, very high indeed at times, often or often he flies low, not disdaining the perilous limit of bathos. Perhaps it is all wilful, it is a mannerism which he cherishes. The mannerism may explain his psychology and enshrine his philosophy. But the poet, the magician is to be looked for elsewhere. In the present collection of poems it is the philosophical, exegetical, discursive Eliot who dominates: although the high lights of the subject-matter may be its justification. Still even if we have here doldrums like
0 1955-04-04, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
When I am not immediately engrossed in work, I have to confront a thousand little temptations and daily difficulties that come from my contact with other beings and a life that does indeed remain in life. Here, even more, there is the feeling of an impossible struggle, and all these little difficulties seem to gnaw away at me; scarcely has one hole been filled when another opens up, or the same one reappears, and there is never any real victoryone has constantly to begin everything again. Finally, it seems to me that I really live only one hour a day, during the evening distribution at the playground.2 It is scarcely a life and scarcely a sadhana!
Consequently, I understand much better now why in the traditional yogas one settled all these difficulties once and for all by escaping from the world, without bothering to transform a life that seems so untransformable.
--
By continuing this daily little ant-like struggle and by having to confront the same desires, the same distractions every day, it seems to me I am wasting my energy in vain. Sri Aurobindos Yoga, which is meant to include life, is so difficult that one should come to it only after having already established the solid base of a concrete divine realization. That is why I want to ask you if I should not withdraw for a certain time, to Almora,3 for example, to Brewsters place,4 to live in solitude, silence, meditation, far away from people, work and temptations, until a beginning of Light and Realization is concretized in me. Once this solid base is acquired, it would be easier for me to resume my work and the struggle here for the true transformation of the outer being. But to want to transform this outer being without having fully illumined the inner being seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse, or at least condemning myself to a pitiless and endless battle in which the best of my forces are fruitlessly consumed.
In all sincerity, I must say that when I was at Brewsters place in Almora, I felt very near to that state in which the Light must surge forth. I quite understand the imperfection of this process, which involves fleeing from difficulties, but this would only be a stage, a strategic retreat, as it were.
0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
At that point, sometimes a great courage is needed, sometimes a great endurance is needed, sometimes a true love is enough, sometimes, oh! if only faith were there, one thing, one tiny little thing is enough, and everything can be swept away. I have done it often; there are times when I have failed. But more often than not I have been able to remove it. But then, what is needed is a great, stoical courage or a capacity to endure and to SEE IT THROUGH. The resistance (especially in cases of former suicide), the resistance to the temptation of renewing this stupidity creates a terrible formation. Or else this habit of fleeing when suffering comes: flee, flee, instead of absorbing the difficulty, holding on.
But just this, a faith in the Grace, or an awareness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response the response, the thing that opens, that breaks the response to this marvelous love of the Grace.
It is difficult without a strong will; and above all, above all the capacity to resist the temptation, which was the fatal temptation throughout all ones livesbecause its power builds up. Each defeat gives it renewed force. But a tiny victory can dissolve it.
Oh, the most terrible of all is when one does not have the strength, the courage, something indomitable! How many times do they come to tell me, I want to die, I want to flee, I want to die.I say, But die, then, die to yourself! No one is asking you to let your ego survive! Die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage, to die to your egoism.
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because this kind of creative Power coming from on high, from up, up, up on the highest heights, beyond all forms of manifestation, mon petit, its like something tremendous held behind a floodgate. And sometimes (Mother smiles) theres a temptation to open the floodgate a little.
When it pours out that will be something.
0 1962-12-22, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I made no reply, not a word: in half an hour I had undone everything I undid it all, really everything, cut the connection between the gods and the people here, demolished absolutely everything. Because you see, I knew it was so attractive for people (they were constantly seeing the most astonishing things) that the obvious temptation was to hang on to it and say, Well improve on itwhich was impossible. So I sat down quietly for half an hour, and I undid it all.
We had to start over again with something else.
0 1963-01-30, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I may even keep the manuscript in pencil: the temptation to correct is very bad. Very bad because its the surface understanding that wants to correctliterary taste, poetical sense and all those things that are down there (gesture down below). You know, its as if (I dont mean the words themselves), as if the CONTENT of the words were projected on a perfectly blank and still screen (Mother points to her forehead), as if the words were projected on it.
The trouble is writing, the materialization between the vision and the writing; the Force has to drive the hand and the pencil, and there is a slight theres still a very slight resistance. Otherwise, if I could write automatically, oh, how nice it would be!
0 1964-08-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The temptation comes sometimes, but Its far more difficult without, but infinitely more living. All this [the Zen account] seems to me I immediately feel something thats becoming dead and drydry, lifeless.
They replace life with a mechanism. And then its finished.
0 1964-08-29, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I suppose that the lack of precision is to protect you from the temptation to speak! But I never speak about those things, just because theyre uninteresting: there are no precise details.
But whats interesting is the agreement: the story of Janaka and the other that come at the exact time. Its very interesting.
0 1968-12-25, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Finally theres a letter from P.L. My stay in Spain was prolonged more than I had thought. Tell Sweet Mother that I am continuing my struggle and my effort, that she follows me everywhere and her protection is my support. I will tell you about my experience. I went to spend a weekend by the sea, where I have a very pretty tiny apartment. There I meditate and go through all the teachings of Mother again by immersing myself in The Life Divine and the Questions and Answers. I lighted an incense stick. Suddenly my whole body broke into a profuse sweat, and an atrocious struggle began. If I could use religious terms from before my Ashramite experiences, I would say that all of St. Anthonys temptations fell on me to destroy and shatter me spiritually. First, a disarray, a very deep distress of helplessness: What use is my life? What am I doing? Why do I live? My efforts are useless. Then there was the attraction of woman, which came to ridicule my continence. Everything was called into question: whys and more whys made my head burst. After that came the invasion of power: Why did you renounce the hope of becoming a bishop? Glory would have come to you. Then the desire for money. Everything in a macabre and at the same time attractive carrousel. Finally, total solitude abandoned by all, all having gone away: my friends, my connections in the Vatican, my family, all of you. How much time went by? I do not know. Nevertheless I think I heard a very small voice (but I was so weak that I cannot say if it was true) telling me, Do not weep, I am with you. If I am with you, others are superfluous, and if you are without me, others wont be able to help you. I remained in a void the whole night passed. In the morning, the sunshine, everything was so beautiful! When I returned to the Rome house, I was told I was transformed! So there.
I did say that to him [I am with you].
03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Eternal Enemy appeared and spread out before our enchanted eyes the panorama of earth's riches and glories, not merely riches of comfort and pleasure and well-being, but glories of power and knowledge; we could not resist this time; we hurled ourselves headlong into the valley of temptation, delivering, as the price of the bargain, our soul. Indeed, we are masters of many fields, our knowledge and power extend over an immense variety of regions, uncharted till now. Even like Vishnu the Dwarf, our consciousness has covered with its three strides the entire creation, barring that domain alone where the soul resides.
Our mind, our life and our body have become today far more conscious and consciously powerfuleach has found itself and is big with its own proper value. But what was familiarly known as the mind of the mind, the life of the life, the body of the body has vanished and all it meant. The pith has been taken out, We are now playing with the empty stalk; the secret thread on which the pearls of life-movements were strung has been removed and they lie about scattered and disjointed. We have enriched our possessions, we have made ourselves more complex and multiple in our becoming: the telescope and the microscope in the physical world, and a subtler sense in the mind also, have extended the superficies of our consciousness. But with all that and in our haste to be busy about too many things, we have forgotten and left out of account the one thing needful.
03.01 - The New Year Initiation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Today at the beginning of the New Year we have to bear in mind what aim, what purpose inspired us to enter into this tremendous terrible work, what force, what strength has been leading us to victory. They who consider themselves as collaborators in the progressive evolution of Nature must constantly realise the truth that if victory has come within the range of possibility, it has done so in just proportion to their sincerity, by the magic grace of the Mahashakti, the grace which the aspiration of their inner consciousness has called down. And what is now but possible will grow into the actual if we keep moving along the path we have so far followed. Otherwise, if we falter, fail and break faith, if we relapse into the old accustomed track, if under pressure of past habits, under the temptation of immediate selfish gain, under the sway of narrow parochial egoism, we suppress or maim the wider consciousness of our inner being or deny it in one way or another, then surely we shall wheel back and fall into the clutches of those very hostile powers which it has been our determined effort to overthrow. Even if we gain an outward victory it will be a disastrous, moral and spiritual defeat. That will mean a tragic reversalto be compelled to begin again from the very beginning. Nature will not be baulked of her aim. Another travail she will have to undergo and that will be far more agonising and terrible.
But we do not expect such a catastrophe. We have hope and confidence that the secret urge of Nature, the force of the Mahashakti will save man, individually and collectively, from ignorance and foolishness, vouchsafe to him genuine good sense and the true inspiration.
03.10 - Hamlet: A Crisis of the Evolving Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Arjuna tided over the crisis as he could avail himself of the knowledge of the way out and the necessary help that was given by the Divine Guide. Hamlet bears the full crash of doom upon his head and makes others also share its consequences with him. At one point, however, he seemed to make just a move towards the right solution of the difficulty. He finds that the avoidance of the Evil by self-destructionwhich is a common and natural temptation in like situationsis no solution: it may lead you into a still greater evil. One has to face the evil, stand and fight it. Once this is decided, the right course for the hero (the Aryan fighter, as the Gitawould say) would be to live
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
05.03 - Of Desire and Atonement, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
He is the hero who resists the temptation to let himself slip, even for a moment, even to the extent of a hair's breadth.
The only atonement for a wrong thing done is to do the right thing on the next occasion.
05.24 - Process of Purification, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are two typeswhich mean two stagesof control. You can control your nature by the force of your will, as one does a wicked horse by means of the toothed bit. But this control is precarious and the clearing or purification effected is only skin-deep. At the slightest weakening of the will or a momentary lack of vigilance, you may find yourself in the very midst of a volcanic eruption of passions. Even otherwise, even if there happens no external outburst, the burden or pressure of the ignorant nature is always there and the struggle or tension, although thrown into the background, obstructs the nature, does not give it the free and spontaneous higher poise of the spirit. The other control comes from the inmost being, from the spiritual self itself: it is automatic and it is occult in its action and therefore naturally effective. When the Spirit, the Inner Control (Antarymi)works, it happens that even if the desires are there, the occasions for their satisfaction are withdrawn from you. As the Mother says, some people who are destined for the spiritual life lose all earthly props whenever they wish to lean upon them, they lose their endeared objects whenever they are eager to cherish them. At a certain stage of the growth of the inner consciousness, the demand of the soul makes it impossible for the vital (or physico-vital), so far as it is unpurified and unprepared, to secure its objects: even if the lips yearn, the cup is taken away. The circumstances themselves yield to the pressure of the inner being and conspire, as it were, to withhold and remove all dangerous contacts. The being has not to say, "Lead me not into temptation", for the temptations by themselves slip away. That is the earlier poise of the interregnum we are describing; the next poise comes when the wish-impulses, the subjective vibrations also melt and disappear. Then there appear no such things as temptations. Objects, events, circumstances that might have acted in that role come and go, but the being remains indifferent and unruffled, because suffused with the delight of another contact. The detachment from the worldly is secure and absolute because the being has found its attachment to the Divine. That is the beginning of the integral spiritualisation of the nature.
***
07.06 - Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There was no temptation of the joy to be.
Unutterably effaced, no one and null,
07.41 - The Divine Family, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The material world is full of things that draw you away from your soul's quest, from approaching your home. Normally you are tossed about by the forces of ignorant Nature and you are driven even to do the worst stupidities. There is but one solution, to find your psychic being; and once you have found it, cling to it desperately and not to allow yourself to be drawn out by any temptation, any other impulsion whatsoever.
***
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
improve things but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the
obvious flaw, the danger but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who
was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such
a position were too great to be resisted.
--
serve as an antidote to the overwhelming temptation constantly posed by the possibility of denying
anomaly. Personal interest subjective meaning reveals itself at the juncture of explored and unexplored
1.00 - The way of what is to come, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
The spirit of our time spoke to me and said: What dire urgency could be forcing you to speak all this? This was an awful temptation. I wanted to ponder what inner or outer bind could force me into this, and because I found nothing that I could grasp, I was near to making one up. But with this the spirit of our time had almost brought it about that instead of speaking, I was thinking again about reasons and explanations. But the spirit of the depths spoke to me and said: "To understand a thing is a bridge and possibility of returning to the path. But to explain a matter is arbitrary and sometimes even murder. Have you counted the murderers among the scholars?".
But the spirit of this time stepped up to me and laid before me huge volumes which contained all my knowledge. Their pages were made of ore, and a steel stylus had engraved inexorable words in them, and he pointed to these inexorable words and spoke to me, and said: "What you speak, that is madness."
10.12 - The Divine Grace and Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Grace means gift, it is a gesture of the giving of boon from the Divine. The Divine gives out of His Plenitude what we want, what we need, what we should have, naturally as per His choice. The most obvious, the most external, superficial and concrete form of gift is what meets our physical material need. And protection is the most appreciated and the most readily available treasure. Protection in its larger sense, includes all kinds and modes of welfare from the most physical to the utmost spiritual. When the aspirant prays: 'Lead us not to temptations, give us purity and peace and truth,' God's answer is His Grace.
But instead of giving any boon, any treasure physical or material or even spiritual, however precious, instead of giving anything the Divine may give Himself to one who approaches Him; then it becomes something more than the Grace, it is Love, the Divine's LoveHis own Self. It is His own substance, His own delight of being that He gives, not anything external or extraneous. One remembers the story of Arjuna and Duryodhana. Duryodhana approached Krishna and thought the utmost, the best that he could secure from Krishna was Krishna's battalions, for that seemed to him the most precious gift of all, for that is the thing he would need most in the coming battle. Arjuna asked for nothing else but Krishna Himself.
1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
The irreligious man is a mortal being with a rational nature, who of his own free will turns his back on life and thinks of his own Maker, the ever-existent, as non-existent. The lawless man is one who holds the law of God after his own depraved fashion,4 and thinks to combine faith in God with heresy that is directly opposed to Him. The Christian is one who imitates Christ in thought, word and deed, as far as is possible for human beings, believing rightly and blamelessly in the Holy Trinity. The lover of God is he who lives in communion with all that is natural and sinless, and as far as he is able neglects nothing good. The continent man is he who in the midst of temptations, snares and turmoil, strives with all his might to imitate the ways of Him who is free from such. The monk is he who within his earthly and soiled body toils towards the rank and state of the incorporeal beings.5 A monk is he who strictly controls his nature and unceasingly watches over his senses. A monk is he who keeps his body
1 Lit. head, Gk. kephale, commonly used as a term of endearment.
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Here it may be remarked that the cult of unity on the political level is only an idolatrous ersatz for the genuine religion of unity on the personal and spiritual levels. Totalitarian regimes justify their existence by means of a philosophy of political monism, according to which the state is God on earth, unification under the heel of the divine state is salvation, and all means to such unification, however intrinsically wicked, are right and may be used without scruple. This political monism leads in practice to excessive privilege and power for the few and oppression for the many, to discontent at home and war abroad. But excessive privilege and power are standing temptations to pride, greed, vanity and cruelty; oppression results in fear and envy; war breeds hatred, misery and despair. All such negative emotions are fatal to the spiritual life. Only the pure in heart and poor in spirit can come to the unitive knowledge of God. Hence, the attempt to impose more unity upon societies than their individual members are ready for makes it psychologically almost impossible for those individuals to realize their unity with the divine Ground and with one another.
Among the Christians and the Sufis, to whose writings we now return, the concern is primarily with the human mind and its divine essence.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
conflict (between temptation and moral purity, for example) requires the construction of an abstract
moral system, powerful enough to allow what an occurrence signifies for the future to govern reaction to
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Now the faithful, truthful and experienced in religion, who are mindful that the soul is treacherous, deceptive, perfidious, malicious and false, always watch carefully over their own souls, lest they should do something that transcends the commands of the law, or that is contrary to reason. The soul is always disposed to say to itself, "I am obedient to the truth : I am submissive to the holy law : [64] and I am well instructed in knowledge." But thou, without being puffed up by this deceitful language of the soul, must constantly look to all its thoughts and states. If it is walking in the path of the law and of the prophets and saints, it is well! and happy is he that is faithful to his word ! But if the soul begin to have an inclination for self-indulgence, to explain away or exceed the limits of the law and to contradict clear and plain knowledge, you must regard it as a machination of the devil and a temptation to the soul. In short, man, until he descends to the grave, must always watch over his soul with attention, to discover in what degree it is obedient to the holy law and in harmony with knowledge. Whoever does not thus watch over and guard himself, is most surely in a delusion and in the way of a just destruction. It is the first step in Islamism, that a man should keep his soul subject to the law.
The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mohammed Al-Ghazzali, the Mohammedan Philosopher, trans. Henry A. Homes (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell, 1873). Transactions of the Albany Institute, vol. VIII.
1.02 - On the Service of the Soul, #The Red Book Liber Novus, #unset, #Zen
You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise fol. ii(v)/iii(r) could it be a true temptation and true overcoming?
The Red Book
--
Christ totally overcomes the temptation of the devil, but not the temptation of God to good and reason. 67 Christ thus succumbs to cursing. 68
You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will, then you will be free and beyond
Christianity.
1.02 - The Human Soul, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
21.: Indiscreet zeal about others must not be indulged in; it may do us much harm; let each one look to herself. However, as I have spoken fully on this subject elsewhere,31' I will not enlarge on it here, and will only beg you to remember the necessity of this mutual affection. Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's if we are always criticizing trivial actions which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through ignorance of their motives. See how much it costs to attain perfection! Sometimes the devil tempts nuns in this way about the Prioress, which is still more dangerous. Great prudence is then required, for if she disobeys the Rule or Constitutions the matter must not always be overlooked, but should be mentioned to her;32' if, after this, she does not amend, the Superior of the Order should be informed of it. It is true charity to speak in this case, as it would be if we saw our sisters commit a grave fault; to keep silence for fear that speech would be a temptation against charity, would be that very temptation itself.33
22.: However, I must warn you seriously not to talk to each other about such things, lest the devil deceive you. He would gain greatly by your doing so, because it would lead to the habit of detraction; rather, as I said, state the matter to those whose duty it is to remedy it. Thank God our custom here of keeping almost perpetual silence gives little opportunity for such conversations, still, it is well to stand ever on our guard.
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Well, we may say, "If it is such a simple matter, then this is what we want and we won't want anything else." But, my dear friends, this wanting is almost everything; there is nothing which it does not include because this tivra samvegatva this wanting, this intensity of asking is of a very strange character. We have never been accustomed to this kind of wanting in this world. We cannot want even our father and mother with the intensity that is expected here. What is the dearest object in this world? Perhaps it is our parents; we cannot think of a dearer thing than father and mother, for instance. We cannot like even them so much, unless certain conditions are fulfilled. Even our love for parents is conditional; unconditioned love is impossible. Certain conditions must be fulfilled only then we love. Otherwise we say, "Good bye, I don't want to look at you." But here it is not like that; this is unconditioned asking. It is not limited by space, time, causality, or any kind of qualification from outside. Whatever may happen, and whatever be the difficulties on the way - whatever be the obstacles and whatever be the temptations we shall not yield to any of these but move straight towards the objective that is before us.
Another peculiar attribute which Patanjali uses is samvega. It is very difficult to translate it into English tivra samvega. Tivra is intense, very forceful, vehement. Samvega is impetuosity, if we would like to put it into English. We know what impetuous movement is it is turbulent, uncontrollable, vehement, powerful, revolting such is the kind of asking that is implied in this sutra. That is samvega like a violent tempest, a forceful wind that is blowing, uprooting all trees and blowing buildings. We know how forcefully the wind can blow off even the top of buildings. That kind of aspiration is called samvegatva, where we do not care for anything else. Let heaven go to hell or hell go to heaven, it makes no difference. The soul is simply revolting against any kind of limitation which has been imposed upon it by any factor whatsoever, even if it is a so-called virtuous factor of the traditional world. Everything is broken to pieces, cast to the winds, crushed under the feet, and the soul simply asks and asks and asks. This is the tivra samvegatva that Patanjali is referring to in the seeking of the great Reality, which is the object of our quest.
10.36 - Cling to Truth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We are in a somewhat different age under different circumstances. At least our aim is different. We stand firm full square against all temptations, all leaning towards compromise, in the faith and certainty that we shall conquer, we shall not go down but the odds against us shall be pushed back and eliminated. This is the age of Victory.
For two things have happenedtwo mighty happenings in earth's history, in the course of nature's evolution here: two unseen events that have new-oriented the destiny of earth and mankind. First of all human consciousness in its essential achievement has risen to a new level of consciousness, although not in the mass, nor generally even in individuals, but there has come a common acquiescence in the being to a higher status of livingproletarianism at its best means nothing else. Human nature has shed something of its mediaeval crudeness and obscurantism, separatism and selfishness; human mind has been more sharpened and polished and widened so as to receive easily the message of the cosmic rays. There has dawned in the atmosphere the perception or sense, of a higher, purer, more luminous and enlightened status of existence. That is, one may say, Nature's gift, the outcome of the millennial, the aeonic working of an aspiration inherent in matter towards light and order. That is the first event. The second one is more occult but more mighty and even devastating. It is the descent, the manifestation, the intervention of a new force here below. They who have seen it know and there is no question. The Veda has declared long ago: The Unseeing have not the Knowledge, those who have eyes possess the Knowledge.
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The will is free and we are at liberty to identify our being either exclusively with our selfness and its interests, regarded as independent of indwelling Spirit and transcendent Godhead (in which case we shall be passively damned or actively fiendish), or exclusively with the divine within us and without (in which case we shall be saints), or finally with self at one moment or in one context and with spiritual not-self at other moments and in other contexts (in which case we shall be average citizens, too theocentric to be wholly lost, and too egocentric to achieve enlightenment and a total deliverance). Since human craving can never be satisfied except by the unitive knowledge of God and since the mind-body is capable of an enormous variety of experiences, we are free to identify ourselves with an almost infinite number of possible objectswith the pleasures of gluttony, for example, or intemperance, or sensuality; with money, power or fame; with our family, regarded as a possession or actually an extension and projection of our own selfness; with our goods and chattels, our hobbies, our collections; with our artistic or scientific talents; with some favourite branch of knowledge, some fascinating special subject; with our professions, our political parties, our churches; with our pains and illnesses; with our memories of success or misfortune, our hopes, fears and schemes for the future; and finally with the eternal Reality within which and by which all the rest has its being. And we are free, of course, to identify ourselves with more than one of these things simultaneously or in succession. Hence the quite astonishingly improbable combination of traits making up a complex personality. Thus a man can be at once the craftiest of politicians and the dupe of his own verbiage, can have a passion for brandy and money, and an equal passion for the poetry of George Meredith and under-age girls and his mother, for horse-racing and detective stories and the good of his country the whole accompanied by a sneaking fear of hell-fire, a hatred of Spinoza and an unblemished record for Sunday church-going. A person born with one kind of psycho-physical constitution will be tempted to identify himself with one set of interests and passions, while a person with another kind of temperament will be tempted to make very different identifications. But these temptations (though extremely powerful, if the constitutional bias is strongly marked) do not have to be succumbed to; people can and do resist them, can and do refuse to identify themselves with what it would be all too easy and natural for them to be; can and do become better and quite other than their own selves. In this context the following brief article on How Men Behave in Crisis (published in a recent issue of Harpers Magazine) is highly significant. A young psychiatrist, who went as a medical observer on five combat missions of the Eighth Air Force in England says that in times of great stress and danger men are likely to react quite uniformly, even though under normal circumstances, they differ widely in personality. He went on one mission, during which the B-17 plane and crew were so severely damaged that survival seemed impossible. He had already studied the on the ground personalities of the crew and had found that they represented a great diversity of human types. Of their behaviour in crisis he reported:
Their reactions were remarkably alike. During the violent combat and in the acute emergencies that arose during it, they were all quietly precise on the interphone and decisive in action. The tail gunner, right waist gunner and navigator were severely wounded early in the fight, but all three kept at their duties efficiently and without cessation. The burden of emergency work fell on the pilot, engineer and ball turret gunner, and all functioned with rapidity, skilful effectiveness and no lost motion. The burden of the decisions, during, but particularly after the combat, rested essentially on the pilot and, in secondary details, on the co-pilot and bombar ther. The decisions, arrived at with care and speed, were unquestioned once they were made, and proved excellent. In the period when disaster was momentarily expected, the alternative plans of action were made clearly and with no thought other than the safety of the entire crew. All at this point were quiet, unobtrusively cheerful and ready for anything. There was at no time paralysis, panic, unclear thinking, faulty or confused judgment, or self-seeking in any one of them.
--
We see then that, when the crisis came, each of these young men forgot the particular personality, which he had built up out of the elements provided by his heredity and the environment in which he had grown up; that one resisted the normally irresistible temptation to identify himself with his mood of the moment, another the temptation to identify himself with his private day-dreams, and so on with the rest; and that all of them behaved in the same strikingly similar and wholly admirable way. It was as though the crisis and the preliminary training for crisis had lifted them out of their divergent personalities and raised them to the same higher level.
Sometimes crisis alone, without any preparatory training, is sufficient to make a man forget to be his customary self and become, for the time being, something quite different. Thus the most unlikely people will, under the influence of disaster, temporarily turn into heroes, martyrs, selfless labourers for the good of their fellows. Very often, too, the proximity of death produces similar results. For example, Samuel Johnson behaved in one way during almost the whole of his life and in quite another way during his last illness. The fascinatingly complex personality, in which six generations of Boswellians have taken so much delight the learned boor and glutton, the kindhearted bully, the superstitious intellectual, the convinced Christian who was a fetishist, the courageous man who was terrified of deathbecame, while he was actually dying, simple, single, serene and God-centred.
1.03 - Some Practical Aspects, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
his own self. With a feeling of inner truth he must look his own faults, weaknesses, and unfitness full in the face. The moment he tries to excuse to himself any of his weaknesses, he has placed a stone in his way on the path which is to lead him upward. Such obstacles can only be removed by self-enlightenment. There is only one way to get rid of faults and failings, and that is by a clear recognition of them. Everything slumbers in the human soul and can be awakened. A person can even improve his intellect and reason, if he quietly and calmly makes it clear to himself why he is weak in this respect. Such self- knowledge is, of course, difficult, for the temptation to self-deception is immeasurably great. Anyone making a habit of being truthful with himself opens the portal leading to a deeper insight.
All curiosity must fall away from the student. He must rid himself as much as possible of the habit of asking questions merely for the sake of gratifying a selfish thirst for knowledge. He must only ask when knowledge can serve to perfect his own being in the service of evolution. Nevertheless, his delight in knowledge and his devotion to it should in no way be hampered. He should listen
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
the Universe is stronger than any temptation to withdraw. The
worst of courses, in their view, would be to retreat from the
1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
At the beginning all of us would make it a point to be present during his meal and watch the function as well as the Mother's part in it. When the time was announced, water was brought for Sri Aurobindo to wash his hands, then he started eating with a spoon and rarely with knife and fork. He would take off his ring, place it in Champaklal's hand and wash. Champakal would put it back on his finger afterwards. Sometimes when he forgot to take off the ring, Champaklal caught hold of the hand before it was dipped in the water. Then the Mother would come, prepare and lay the table, push it herself up to Sri Aurobindo and arrange the various foods in bowls or glass tumblers, in the order of savouries, sweets and fruit juices everything having an atmosphere of cleanliness, purity and beauty. Then she would offer, one by one, the dishes to the silent Deity who would take them slowly and silently as if the eating was not for the satisfaction of the palate but an act of self-offering. Steadiness and silence were the characteristic stamps of Sri Aurobindo. Dhra, according to him, was the ideal of Aryan culture. Hurry and hustle were words not found in his dictionary. Be it eating, drinking, walking or talking he did it always in a slow and measured rhythm, giving the impression that every movement was conscious and consecrated. The Mother would punctuate the silence with queries like, "How do you like that dish?" or such remarks as, "This mushroom is grown here, this is special brinjal sent from Benares, this is butterfruit." To all, Sri Aurobindo's reply would be, "Oh, I see! Quite good!" Typically English in manner and tone! His silence or laconic praise made us wonder if he had not lost all distinction in taste! Did rasagolla, bread and brinjal have the same taste in the Divine sense-experience? Making this vital point clear, he wrote in a letter: "Distinction is never lost, bread cannot be as tasty as a luchi, but a yogi can enjoy bread with as much rasa as a luchi which is quite a different thing." He had a liking for sweets, particularly for rasagolla, sandesh and pantua. We could see that clearly: after the Mother had banned all sweets from his menu for medical reasons, one day some pantuas found their way in by chance. The Mother could not send them back from the table. She asked him if he would take some. He replied, "If it is pantua, I can try." Since then this became a spicy joke with all of us. He enjoyed, as a matter of fact, all kinds of good dishes, European or Indian. But whatever was not to his taste, he would just touch and put away. The pungent preparations of the South could not, however, receive his blessings, except the rasam[1]. When on his arrival in Pondicherry he was given rasam, he enjoyed it very much and said in our talks, "It has a celestial taste!" He was neither a puritan god nor an epicure; only, he had no hankering or attachment for anything. His meal ended with a big tumbler of orange juice which he sipped slowly, looking after each sip to see how much was left, and keeping a small quantity as prasd. Once the entire juice had slightly fermented and after one or two sips he left it at the Mother's prompting. We conspired to make good use of it as prasd, but Sri Aurobindo got the scent of our secret design and forewarned us! We had to check our temptation.
One thing that we noticed was that unless the Mother served him in this way, he would lose all distinction between different preparations and would not know which to take first and in which order. Very probably he would have gone half-fed. On one occasion we saw him eating a whole cooked green chilly before we could cry halt! Of course, what was one chilly for him who is said in the old days to have taken a lump of opium with impunity! We have also seen him finishing his meal somehow, if for some reason the Mother could not be present and Champaklal had to serve instead. The story goes that once Mridu's dish went back without being touched by Sri Aurobindo, and she raised a storm. Sri Aurobindo had to quiet her with the plea that the Mother being absent he did not know what he had taken or what he had not. On another occasion Sri Aurobindo's meal being over earlier than usual, Mridu's dish arrived late and was left untouched. As soon as she heard about it she began to wail "like a new-born babe" as if she would bring down the whole Ashram by her lamentations. Dr. Manilal reported the fact to Sri Aurobindo and he asked, "How did she know about it?" I replied apologetically, "I told her." He said softly, "These things should not be said;" then he added with a smile, "but it is I who ought to lament for having missed her fine dish." We all had a good laugh.
1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
the temptations from celestial beings. When the Yogi has seen
all these wonderful powers, and rejected them, he reaches the
--
but he who is strong enough to withstand these temptations,
and go straight to the goal, becomes free.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
To its heights we can always come. For those of us who are still splashing about in the lower ooze, the phrase has a rather ironical ring. Nevertheless, in the light of even the most distant acquaintance with the heights and the fulness, it is possible to understand what its author means. To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only there, but also in the outer world of minds and things and living creatures. It is easier because the heights within reveal themselves to those who are ready to exclude from their purview all that lies without. And though this exclusion may be a painful and mortificatory process, the fact remains that it is less arduous than the process of inclusion, by which we come to know the fulness as well as the heights of spiritual life. Where there is exclusive concentration on the heights within, temptations and distractions are avoided and there is a general denial and suppression. But when the hope is to know God inclusivelyto realize the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance; there must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental. Mortification becomes more searching and more subtle; there is need of unsleeping awareness and, on the levels of thought, feeling and conduct, the constant exercise of something like an artists tact and taste.
It is in the literature of Mahayana and especially of Zen Buddhism that we find the best account of the psychology of the man for whom Samsara and Nirvana, time and eternity, are one and the same. More systematically perhaps than any other religion, the Buddhism of the Far East teaches the way to spiritual Knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights, in and through the world as well as in and through the soul. In this context we may point to a highly significant fact, which is that the incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism; in Europe, on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of nature worship were secular arts which arose when Christianity was in decline, and derived little or no inspiration from Christian ideals.
1.04 - Of other imperfections which these beginners are apt to have with respect to the third sin, which is luxury., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
3. The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayerwhich is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. And not only so, but he succeeds in portraying to them very vividly things that are most foul and impure, and at times are very closely related to certain spiritual things and persons that are of profit to their souls, in order to terrify them and make them fearful; so that those who are affected by this dare not even look at anything or meditate upon anything, because they immediately encounter this temptation. And upon those who are inclined to melancholy this acts with such effect that they become greatly to be pitied since they are suffering so sadly; for this trial reaches such a point in certain persons, when they have this evil humour, that they believe it to be clear that the devil is ever present with them and that they have no power to prevent this, although some of these persons can prevent his attack by dint of great effort and labour. When these impurities attack such souls through the medium of melancholy, they are not as a rule freed from them until they have been cured of that kind of humour, unless the dark night has entered the soul, and rids them of all impurities, one after another.36
34[Lit., 'recreation.']
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
This heroic Abbacyrus lived in the monastery for two years after my coming there, and then passed to the Lord. Just before his death he said to the Fathers: I am thankful, thankful to the Lord and to you. For having been tempted by you for my salvation, I have lived for seventeen years without temptations from devils. The just shepherd duly rewarded him and ordered him, as a confessor, to be buried with the local saints.
About Macedonius the archdeacon
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It is impossible that the devil should act contrary to his own will. Let those living an easy-going life, whether persevering in one solitary place or in a community, convince you of this. Let the temptation to retire from our place be a proof for us that our life there is pleasing to God. For being warred against is a sign that we are making war.
1 Lit. a deacon or minister.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
This thought was such a temptation that I had to use cunning against myself in order not to go through
with it too hastily. I did not want to be in a hurry only because I wanted to use all my strength to
--
as renewed assault by the temptations of profane life). The discipline he had acquired in his previous
journeys serves him well, however, and he is able to remain single-mindedly devoted to his task to the
discovery of a truth that would serve life, that would redeem human experience. His final temptation is
perhaps the most interesting. The Buddha attains nirvana, perfection, as a consequence of his ordeal, and is
1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Lead us not into temptation must be the guiding principle of all social organization, and the temptations to be guarded against and, so far as possible, eliminated by means of appropriate economic and political arrangements are temptations against charity, that is to say, against the disinterested love of God, Nature and man. First, the dissemination and general acceptance of any form of the Perennial Philosophy will do something to preserve men and women from the temptation to idolatrous worship of things in timechurch-worship, state-worship, revolutionary future-worship, humanistic self-worship, all of them essentially and necessarily opposed to charity. Next come decentralization, widespread private ownership of land and the means of production on a small scale, discouragement of monopoly by state or corporation, division of economic and political power (the only guarantee, as Lord Acton was never tired of insisting, of civil liberty under law). These social rearrangements would do much to prevent ambitious individuals, organizations and governments from being led into the temptation of behaving tyrannously; while co-operatives, democratically controlled professional organizations and town meetings would deliver the masses of the people from the temptation of making their decentralized individualism too rugged. But of course none of these intrinsically desirable reforms can possibly be carried out, so long as it is thought right and natural that sovereign states should prepare to make war on one another. For modern war cannot be waged except by countries with an over-developed capital goods industry; countries in which economic power is wielded either by the state or by a few monopolistic corporations which it is easy to tax and, if necessary, temporarily to nationalize; countries where the labouring masses, being without property, are rootless, easily transferable from one place to another, highly regimented by factory discipline. Any decentralized society of free, uncoerced small owners, with a properly balanced economy must, in a war-making world such as ours, be at the mercy of one whose production is highly mechanized and centralized, whose people are without property and therefore easily coercible, and whose economy is lop-sided. This is why the one desire of industrially undeveloped countries like Mexico and China is to become like Germany, or England, or the United States. So long as the organized lovelessness of war and preparation for war remains, there can be no mitigation, on any large, nation-wide or world-wide scale, of the organized lovelessness of our economic and political relationships. War and preparation for war are standing temptations to make the present bad, God-eclipsing arrangements of society progressively worse as technology becomes progressively more efficient.
next chapter: 1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD
1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
source of weakness and temptation the field of moral and social defeat.
[150]
1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
himself to the highest point of the Universe. The temptation
is quite natural. But let him beware! Despite, or rather be-
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
magnitude to resist the temptation of absolute power, freely offered, democratically granted even insisted
upon? How would it be possible for anyone to remain properly humble, under such conditions? Most of us
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the perfection of the world, despite the troublesome existence of free choice and demonic temptation. (The
name, Lucifer, means bringer of light, after all as I have noted previously.) I also knew, more or less
--
for part one of Faust. 465 Reason, the most exceptional of spirits, suffers from the greatest of temptations:
reasons own capacity for self-recognition and self-admiration means endless capacity for pride, which
--
a profound temptation, in the midst of that chaos.
Tolstoy begins the relevant section of his confession with an allegory, derived from a tale of the East.
--
then facing the world. His story implied that because he had given in to temptation, at a critical juncture, he
was in fact responsible for the horror of the potential of nuclear war. But how could this be? It seemed
1.06 - Dhyana and Samadhi, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
When, by the previous preparations, it becomes strong and controlled, and has the power of finer perception, the mind should be employed in meditation. This meditation must begin with gross objects and slowly rise to finer and finer, until it becomes objectless. The mind should first be employed in perceiving the external causes of sensations, then the internal motions, and then its own reaction. When it has succeeded in perceiving the external causes of sensations by themselves, the mind will acquire the power of perceiving all fine material existences, all fine bodies and forms. When it can succeed in perceiving the motions inside by themselves, it will gain the control of all mental waves, in itself or in others, even before they have translated themselves into physical energy; and when he will be able to perceive the mental reaction by itself, the Yogi will acquire the knowledge of everything, as every sensible object, and every thought is the result of this reaction. Then will he have seen the very foundations of his mind, and it will be under his perfect control. Different powers will come to the Yogi, and if he yields to the temptations of any one of these, the road to his further progress will be barred. Such is the evil of running after enjoyments. But if he is strong enough to reject even these miraculous powers, he will attain to the goal of Yoga, the complete suppression of the waves in the ocean of the mind. Then the glory of the soul, undisturbed by the distractions of the mind, or motions of the body, will shine in its full effulgence; and the Yogi will find himself as he is and as he always was, the essence of knowledge, the immortal, the all-pervading.
Samadhi is the property of every human being nay, every animal. From the lowest animal to the highest angel, some time or other, each one will have to come to that state, and then, and then alone, will real religion begin for him. Until then we only struggle towards that stage. There is no difference now between us and those who have no religion, because we have no experience. What is concentration good for, save to bring us to this experience? Each one of the steps to attain Samadhi has been reasoned out, properly adjusted, scientifically organised, and, when faithfully practiced, will surely lead us to the desired end. Then will all sorrows cease, all miseries vanish; the seeds for actions will be burnt, and the soul will be free for ever.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Mortification is not, as many people seem to imagine, a matter, primarily, of severe physical austerities. It is possible that, for certain persons in certain circumstances, the practice of severe physical austerities may prove helpful in advance towards mans final end. In most cases, however, it would seem that what is gained by such austerities is not liberation, but something quite different the achievement of psychic powers. The ability to get petitionary prayer answered, the power to heal and work other miracles, the knack of looking into the future or into other peoples mindsthese, it would seem, are often related in some kind of causal connection with fasting, watching and the self-infliction of pain. Most of the great theocentric saints and spiritual teachers have admitted the existence of supernormal powers, only, however, to deplore them. To think that such Siddhis, as the Indians call them, have anything to do with liberation is, they say, a dangerous illusion. These things are either irrelevant to the main issue of life, or, if too much prized and attended to, an obstacle in the way of spiritual advance. Nor are these the only objections to physical austerities. Carried to extremes, they may be dangerous to health and without health the steady persistence of effort required by the spiritual life is very difficult of achievement. And being difficult, painful and generally conspicuous, physical austerities are a standing temptation to vanity and the competitive spirit of record breaking. When thou didst give thyself up to physical mortification, thou wast great, thou wast admired. So writes Suso of his own experiencesexperiences which led him, just as Gautama Buddha had been led many centuries before, to give up his course of bodily penance. And St. Teresa remarks how much easier it is to impose great penances upon oneself than to suffer in patience, charity and humbleness the ordinary everyday crosses of family life (which did not prevent her, incidentally, from practising, to the very day of her death, the most excruciating forms of self-torture. Whether these austerities really helped her to come to the unitive knowledge of God, or whether they were prized and persisted in because of the psychic powers they helped to develop, there is no means of determining).
Our dear Saint (Franois de Sales) disapproved of immoderate fasting. He used to say that the spirit could not endure the body when overfed, but that, if underfed, the body could not endure the spirit.
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First, that she should do all that belonged to her to do by any law, human or Divine. Secondly, that she was to refrain from doing those things that were forbidden her by human or Divine Law, or by Divine inspiration. Thirdly, that she should bear with as much patience or resignation as possible all crosses and contradictions to her natural will, which were inflicted by the hand of God. Such, for instance, were aridities, temptations, afflictions or bodily pain, sickness and infirmity; or again, the loss of friends or want of necessaries and comforts. All this was to be endured patiently, whether the crosses came direct from God or by means of His creatures. These indeed were mortifications enough for Dame Gertrude, or for any other soul, and there was no need for anyone to advise or impose others.
Augustine Baker
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There can be no complete communism except in the goods of the spirit and, to some extent also, of the mind, and only when such goods are possessed by men and women in a state of non-attachment and self-denial. Some degree of mortification, it should be noted, is an indispensable prerequisite for the creation and enjoyment even of merely intellectual and aesthetic goods. Those who choose the profession of artist, philosopher, or man of science, choose, in many cases, a life of poverty and unrewarded hard work. But these are by no means the only mortifications they have to undertake. When he looks at the world, the artist must deny his ordinary human tendency to think of things in utilitarian, self-regarding terms. Similarly, the critical philosopher must mortify his commonsense, while the research worker must steadfastly resist the temptations to over-simplify and think conventionally, and must make himself docile to the leadings of mysterious Fact. And what is true of the creators of aesthetic and intellectual goods is also true of the enjoyers of such goods, when created. That these mortifications are by no means trifling has been shown again and again in the course of history. One thinks, for example, of the intellectually mortified Socrates and the hemlock with which his unmortified compatriots rewarded him. One thinks of the heroic efforts that had to be made by Galileo and his contemporaries to break with the Aristotelian convention of thought, and the no less heroic efforts that have to be made today by any scientist who believes that there is more in the universe than can be discovered by employing the time-hallowed recipes of Descartes. Such mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artistand the philosopher and the man of science are also artistsknows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession.
The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying.
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Of all social, moral and spiritual problems that of power is the most chronically urgent and the most difficult of solution. Craving for power is not a vice of the body, consequently knows none of the limitations imposed by a tired or satiated physiology upon gluttony, intemperance and lust. Growing with every successive satisfaction, the appetite for power can manifest itself indefinitely, without interruption by bodily fatigue or sickness. Moreover, the nature of society is such that the higher a man climbs in the political, economic or religious hierarchy, the greater are his opportunities and resources for exercising power. But climbing the hierarchical ladder is ordinarily a slow process, and the ambitious rarely reach the top till they are well advanced in life. The older he grows, the more chances does the power lover have for indulging his besetting sin, the more continuously is he subjected to temptations and the more glamorous do those temptations become. In this respect his situation is profoundly different from that of the debauchee. The latter may never voluntarily leave his vices, but at least, as he advances in years, he finds his vices leaving him; the former neither leaves his vices nor is left by them. Instead of bringing to the power lover a merciful respite from his addictions, old age is apt to intensify them by making it easier for him to satisfy his cravings on a larger scale and in a more spectacular way. That is why, in Actons words, all great men are bad. Can we therefore be surprised if political action, undertaken, in all too many cases, not for the public good, but solely or at least primarily to gratify the power lusts of bad men, should prove so often either self-stultifying or downright disastrous?
Ltat cest moi, says the tyrant; and this is true, of course, not only of the autocrat at the apex of the pyramid, but of all the members of the ruling minority through whom he governs and who are, in fact, the real rulers of the nation. Moreover, so long as the policy which gratifies the power lusts of the ruling class is successful, and so long as the price of success is not too high, even the masses of the ruled will feel that the state is themselvesa vast and splendid projection of the individuals intrinsically insignificant ego. The little man can satisfy his lust for power vicariously through the activities of the imperialistic state, just as the big man does; the difference between them is one of degree, not of kind.
1.06 - Of imperfections with respect to spiritual gluttony., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
8. These persons have many other imperfections which arise hence, of which in time the Lord heals them by means of temptations, aridities and other trials, all of which are part of the dark night. All these I will not treat further here, lest I become too lengthy; I will only say that spiritual temperance and sobriety lead to another and a very different temper, which is that of mortification, fear and submission in all things. It thus becomes clear that the perfection and worth of things consist not in the multitude and the pleasantness of one's actions, but in being able to deny oneself in them; this such persons must endeavour to compass, in so far as they may, until God is pleased to purify them indeed, by bringing them52 into the dark night, to arrive at which I am hastening on with my account of these imperfections.
1.06 - Raja Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
25. Do not run after Siddhis. Siddhis are great temptations. They will bring about your downfall.
26. A Raja Yogi practises Samyama or the combined practice of Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi at one and the same time and gets detailed knowledge of an object.
1.06 - THE MASTER WITH THE BRAHMO DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to the Marwari devotees): "You see, the feeling of 'I' and 'mine' is the result of ignorance. But to say, 'O God, Thou art the Doer; all these belong to Thee' is the sign of Knowledge. How can you say such a thing as 'mine'? The superintendent of the garden says, 'This is my garden.' But if he is dismissed because of some misconduct, then he does not have the courage to take away even such a worthless thing as his mango-wood box. Anger and lust cannot be destroyed. Turn them toward God. If you must feel desire and temptation, then desire to realize God, feel tempted by Him. Discriminate and turn the passions away from worldly objects. When the elephant is about to devour a plaintain-tree in someone's garden, the mahut strikes it with his iron-tipped goad.
"You are merchants. You know how to improve your business gradually. Some of you start with a castor-oil factory. After making some money at that, you open a cloth shop. In the same way, one makes progress toward God. It may be that you go into solitude, now and then, and devote more time to prayer.
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In later Buddhist philosophy words are regarded as one of the prime determining factors in the creative evolution of human beings. In this philosophy five categories of being are recognizedName, Appearance, Discrimination, Right Knowledge. Suchness. The first three are related for evil, the last two for good. Appearances are discriminated by the sense organs, then reified by naming, so that words are taken for things and symbols are used as the measure of reality. According to this view, language is a main source of the sense of separateness and the blasphemous idea of individual self-sufficiency, with their inevitable corollaries of greed, envy, lust for power, anger and cruelty. And from these evil passions there springs the necessity of an indefinitely protracted and repeated separate existence under the same, self-perpetuated conditions of craving and infatuation. The only escape is through a creative act of the will, assisted by Buddha-grace, leading through selflessness to Right Knowledge, which consists, among other things, in a proper appraisal of Names, Appearances and Discrimination. In and through Right Knowledge, one emerges from the infatuating delusion of I, me, mine, and, resisting the temptation to deny the world in a state of premature and one-sided ecstasy, or to affirm it by living like the average sensual man, one comes at last to the transfiguring awareness that samsara and nirvana are one, to the unitive apprehension of pure Suchness the ultimate Ground, which can only be indicated, never adequately described in verbal symbols.
In connection with the Mahayanist view that words play an important and even creative part in the evolution of unregenerate human nature, we may mention Humes arguments against the reality of causation. These arguments start from the postulate that all events are loose and separate from one another and proceed with faultless logic to a conclusion that makes complete nonsense of all organized thought or purposive action. The fallacy, as Professor Stout has pointed out, lies in the preliminary postulate. And when we ask ourselves what it was that induced Hume to make this odd and quite unrealistic assumption that events are loose and separate, we see that his only reason for flying in the face of immediate experience was the fact that things and happenings are symbolically represented in our thought by nouns, verbs and adjectives, and that these words are, in effect, loose and separate from one another in a way which the events and things they stand for quite obviously are not. Taking words as the measure of things, instead of using things as the measure of words, Hume imposed the discrete and, so to say, pointilliste pattern of language upon the continuum of actual experiencewith the impossibly paradoxical results with which we are all familiar. Most human beings are not philosophers and care not at all for consistency in thought or action. Thus, in some circumstances they take it for granted that events are not loose and separate, but co-exist or follow one another within the organized and organizing field of a cosmic whole. But on other occasions, where the opposite view is more nearly in accord with their passions or interests, they adopt, all unconsciously, the Humian position and treat events as though they were as independent of one another and the rest of the world as the words by which they are symbolized. This is generally true of all occurrences involving I, me, mine. Reifying the loose and separate names, we regard the things as also loose and separatenot subject to law, not involved in the network of relationships, by which in fact they are so obviously bound up with their physical, social and spiritual environment. We regard as absurd the idea that there is no causal process in nature and no organic connection between events and things in the lives of other people; but at the same time we accept as axiomatic the notion that our own sacred ego is loose and separate from the universe, a law unto itself above the moral dharma and even, in many respects, above the natural law of causality. Both in Buddhism and Catholicism, monks and nuns were encouraged to avoid the personal pronoun and to speak of themselves in terms of circumlocutions that clearly indicated their real relationship with the cosmic reality and their fellow creatures. The precaution was a wise one. Our responses to familiar words are conditioned reflexes. By changing the stimulus, we can do something to change the response. No Pavlov bell, no salivation; no harping on words like me and mine, no purely automatic and unreflecting egotism. When a monk speaks of himself, not as I, but as this sinner or this unprofitable servant, he tends to stop taking his loose and separate selfhood for granted, and makes himself aware of his real, organic relationship with God and his neighbours.
1.08 - Psycho therapy Today, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
of human existence, is set up as a goal. Society is the greatest temptation to
unconsciousness, for the mass infallibly swallows up the individualwho
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A physical culture which aims at building a body capable of serving as a fit instrument for a higher consciousness demands very austere habits: a great regularity in sleep, food, exercise and every activity. By a scrupulous study of ones own bodily needs for they vary with each individuala general programme will be established; and once this has been done well, it must be followed rigorously, without any fantasy or slackness. There must be no little exceptions to the rule that are indulged in just for once but which are repeated very often for as soon as one yields to temptation, even just for once, one lessens the resistance of the will-power and opens the door to every failure. One must therefore forgo all weakness: no more nightly escapades from which one comes back exhausted, no more feasting and carousing which upset the normal functioning of the stomach, no more distractions, amusements and pleasures that only waste energy and leave one without the strength to do the daily practice. One must submit to the austerity of a sensible and regular life, concentrating all ones physical attention on building a body that comes as close to perfection as possible. To reach this ideal goal, one must strictly shun all excess and every vice, great or small; one must deny oneself the use of such slow poisons as tobacco, alcohol, etc., which men have a habit of developing into indispensable needs that gradually destroy the will and the memory. The all-absorbing interest which nearly all human beings, even the most intellectual, have in food, its preparation and its consumption, should be replaced by an almost chemical knowledge of the needs of the body and a very scientific austerity in satisfying them. Another austerity must be added to that of food, the austerity of sleep. It does not consist in going without sleep but in knowing how to sleep. Sleep must not be a fall into unconsciousness which makes the body heavy instead of refreshing it. Eating with moderation and abstaining from all excess greatly reduces the need to spend many hours in sleep; however, the quality of sleep is much more important than its quantity. In order to have a truly effective rest and relaxation during sleep, it is good as a rule to drink something before going to bed, a cup of milk or soup or fruit-juice, for instance. Light food brings a quiet sleep. One should, however, abstain from all copious meals, for then the sleep becomes agitated and is disturbed by nightmares, or else is dense, heavy and dulling. But the most important thing of all is to make the mind clear, to quieten the emotions and calm the effervescence of desires and the preoccupations which accompany them. If before retiring to bed one has talked a lot or had a lively discussion, if one has read an exciting or intensely interesting book, one should rest a little without sleeping in order to quieten the mental activity, so that the brain does not engage in disorderly movements while the other parts of the body alone are asleep. Those who practise meditation will do well to concentrate for a few minutes on a lofty and restful idea, in an aspiration towards a higher and vaster consciousness. Their sleep will benefit greatly from this and they will largely be spared the risk of falling into unconsciousness while they sleep.
After the austerity of a night spent wholly in resting in a calm and peaceful sleep comes the austerity of a day which is sensibly organised; its activities will be divided between the progressive and skilfully graded exercises required for the culture of the body, and work of some kind or other. For both can and ought to form part of the physical tapasya. With regard to exercises, each one will choose the ones best suited to his body and, if possible, take guidance from an expert on the subject, who knows how to combine and grade the exercises to obtain a maximum effect. Neither the choice nor the execution of these exercises should be governed by fancy. One must not do this or that because it seems easier or more amusing; there should be no change of training until the instructor considers it necessary. The self-perfection or even simply the self-improvement of each individual body is a problem to be solved, and its solution demands much patience, perseverance and regularity. In spite of what many people think, the athletes life is not a life of amusement or distraction; on the contrary, it is a life of methodical efforts and austere habits, which leave no room for useless fancies that go against the result one wants to achieve.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When we look carefully at the passage before us, we find an expression which strikes one as a very extraordinary phrase in reference to a god of lightning and rain. Indryhi, says Madhuchchhanda, dhiyeshito viprajtah. On any ordinary acceptance of the meaning of words, we have to render this line, Come, O Indra, impelled by the understanding, driven by the Wise One. Sayana thinks that vipra means Brahmin and the idea is that Indra is moved to come by the intelligent sacrificing priests and he explains dhiyeshito, moved to come by our understanding, that is to say, by our devotion. But understanding does not mean devotion and the artificiality of the interpretation is apparent.We will, as usual, put aside the ritualistic & naturalistic traditions and see to what the natural sense of the words themselves leads us. I question the traditional acceptance of viprajta as a compound of vipra & jta; it seems tome clearly to be vi prajtah, driven forward variously or in various directions. I am content to accept the primary sense of impelled for ishita, although, whether we read dhiy ishito with the Padapatha, or dhiy shito, it may equally well mean, controlled by the understanding; but of themselves the expressions impelled & driven forward in various paths imply a perfect control.We have then, Come, O Indra, impelled (or controlled, governed) by the understanding and driven forward in various paths. What is so driven forward? Obviously not the storm, not the lightning, not any force of material Nature, but a subjective force, and, as one can see at a glance, a force of mind. Now Indra is the king of Swar and Swar in the symbolical interpretation of the Vedic terms current in after times is the mental heaven corresponding to the principle of Manas, mind. His name means the Strong. In the Puranas he is that which the Rishis have to conquer in order to attain their goal, that which sends the Apsaras, the lower delights & temptations of the senses to bewilder the sage and the hero; and, as is well known, in the Indian system of Yoga it is the Mind with its snares, sensuous temptations & intellectual delusions which is the enemy that has to be overcome & the strong kingdom that has to be conquered. In this passage Indra is not thought of in his human form, but as embodied in the principle of light or tejas; he is harivas, substance of brightness; he is chitrabhnu, of a rich & various effulgence, epithets not easily applicable to a face or figure, but precisely applicable to the principle of mind which has always been supposed in India to be in its material element made of tejas or pure light.We may conclude, therefore, that in Indra, master of Swarga, we have the divine lord of mental force & power. It is as this mental power that he comes sutvatah upa brahmni vghatah, to the soul-movements of the chanter of the sacred song, of the holder of the nectar-wine. He is asked to come, impelled or controlled by the understanding and driven forward by it in the various paths of sumati & snrit, right thinking & truth. We remember the image in the Kathopanishad in which the mind & senses are compared to reins & horses and the understanding to the driver. We look back & see at once the connection with the function demanded of the Aswins in the preceding verses; we look forward & see easily the connection with the activity of Saraswati in the closing riks. The thought of the whole Sukta begins to outline itself, a strong, coherent and luminous progression of psychological images begins to emerge.
Brahmni, says Sayana, means the hymnal chants; vghatah is the ritwik, the sacrificial priest. These ritual senses belong to the words but we must always inquire how they came to bear them. As to vghat, we have little clue or evidence, but on the system I have developed in another work (the Origins of Aryan Speech), it may be safely concluded that the lost roots vagh & vgh, must have conveyed the sense of motion evident in the Latin vagus & vagari, wandering & to wander & the sense of crying out, calling apparent in the Latin vagire, to cry, & the Sanscrit vangh, to abuse, censure. Vghat may mean the sacrificial priest because he is the one who calls to the deity in the chant of the brahma, the sacred hymn. It may also mean one who increases in being, in his brahma, his soul, who is getting vja or substance.
1.08 - The Splitting of the Human Personality during Spiritual Training, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
It is for this reason that so much is found in books dealing with these matters concerning the dangers connected with the ascent into higher worlds. The descriptions sometimes given of these dangers may well make timid souls shudder at the prospect of this higher life. Yet the fact is that dangers only arise when the necessary precautions are neglected. If all the measures counseled by true esoteric science are adopted, the ascent will indeed ensue through experiences surpassing in power and magnitude everything the boldest flights of sense-bound fantasy can picture; and yet there can be no question of injury to health or life. The student meets with horrible powers threatening life at every turn and from every side. It will even be possible for him to make use of certain forces and beings existing beyond physical perception, and the temptation is great to control these forces for the furtherance of personal and forbidden interests, or to employ them wrongly out of a deficient knowledge of the higher worlds. Some of
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1.08 - The Supreme Discovery, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
It is not the intention of the Yoga Shastra to describe what powers come to a yogi when he concentrates or practises samyama, as these are temptations and sidetracking issues. But anyhow, for the purpose of giving an idea of the greatness of the practice, and also to give some sort of an enthusiasm to the practitioners, the Yoga Sutra has gone into some detail as to the nature of these powers.
Our main point is samyama. There is no use merely counting the number of rich persons in the world and trying to find out the means by which they have become rich. Well, that may be a good science as a kind of theoretical pursuit, but what do we gain by knowing how many rich people are there in this world and how they have become rich? We will not become rich by knowing these methods, because it is a science by itself and not merely a historical study or a survey that we make statistically. The science is a more important aspect of the matter than merely a statement of the consequences or results that follow by the pursuit of the science. What is the science? That is samyama, the subject that we have been studying all along. How are we able to concentrate the mind? For this purpose the author has taken great pains in some of the sutras to explain how the mind can be made to agree, wholeheartedly, with the pursuit of yoga, and how distractions can be eliminated. It is this that is the intention of the sutras, right from those which dealt with the nirodha parinama, etc., onwards.
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The two motive powers of our actions are (1) what we see ourselves, (2) the experience of others. These two forces throw the mind, the lake, into various waves. Renunciation is the power of battling against these forces and holding the mind in check. Their renunciation is what see want. I am passing through a street, and a man comes and takes away my watch. That is my own experience. I see it myself, and it immediately throws my Chitta into a wave, taking the form of anger. Allow not that to come. If you cannot prevent that, you are nothing; if you can, you have Vairgya. Again, the experience of the worldly-minded teaches us that sense-enjoyments are the highest ideal. These are tremendous temptations. To deny them, and not allow the mind to come to a wave form with regard to them, is renunciation; to control the twofold motive powers arising from my own experience and from the experience of others, and thus prevent the Chitta from being governed by them, is Vairagya. These should be controlled by me, and not I by them. This sort of mental strength is called renunciation. Vairagya is the only way to freedom.
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
There are no physical obstacles in the higher realms. The obstacle in the physical world is the physical body. That is the object and, therefore, we cannot enjoy it properly. The presence of the physical body obstructs the union that we seek with the object, which is the reason for this search for enjoyment through the senses. But there are no physical bodies in the higher realms; therefore, the temptations are more powerful, and it is a greater difficulty there than here on earth. It is possible that one can get stuck in the higher realms more easily than on earth. All these have to be watched with great care, and the sutra tells us: What to talk of these enjoyments; you have to be free even from the desire to have omniscience, and you should ask for pure Being-consciousness only. Sarvatha vivekakhyateh it is not knowledge of things that we are asking for; it is knowledge as such, which is knowledge of being alone. This is the purusha. Then comes dharma-megha samadhi. At that time, what happens?
Nobody can say what happens. No one can go there and see what happens. Dharma-megha samadhi is only a term which is defined in various ways, but it is said to be a divine gift which is bestowed upon the seeker by the powers that be the divine forces that guard the cosmos. Rapturous descriptions of this condition can be found in such scriptures as the Yoga Vasishtha where we are told that even the divine beings, the guardians of the cosmos, become our servants. The guardians of the cosmos become the servants of this man. Such things are told in the Yoga Vasishtha and other scriptures of that kind.
1.10 - BOOK THE TENTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #Poetry
With the temptation of the second gold:
The bright temptation fruitlessly was tost,
So soon, alas! she won the distance lost.
1.10 - Life and Death. The Greater Guardian of the Threshold, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
With these words the greater Guardian makes his presence known soon after the meeting with the first Guardian has taken place. The initiate knows full well what is in store for him if he yields to the temptation of a premature abode in the supersensible world. An indescribable splendor shines forth from the second Guardian of the
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1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
mental, were the temptation that led to the fall.
For in the original being of light on the verge of the
1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
for any inner experience touching our being's intimate substance always feels irrefutable and final when it occurs; it is dazzling at any level we may recall Vivekananda speaking of Nirvana: "An ocean of infinite peace, without a ripple, without a breath" and there is great temptation to remain there, as if that were the ultimate haven. We will simply mention this advice of the Mother to all seekers: Whatever the nature, the power or the marvel of an experience, you must never be dominated by it to the point of it overwhelming your whole being. . . .
Whenever you enter in some way in contact with a force or a consciousness that is beyond your own, instead of being entirely subjugated by this consciousness or force, you must always remember that this is but one experience among thousands and thousands of others, and consequently it is by no means absolute. No matter how beautiful it is, you can and you must have better ones; no matter how exceptional it is, there are others that are even more marvelous; and no matter how high it is, you can always rise higher in the future.
11.14 - Our Finest Hour, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
On the contrary, the prison need not be altogether a prison, it may be an occasion, an opportunity for the human consciousness to make a break-through to create a new dimension. Here is then our immediate workto conquer inner domains, the inner truths: for all truths are found first within the consciousness, established there before they become facts. So then let us harness our power and prowess, our aspiration and sincerity, all our life energy to the labour of the inner conquest. Let us stop awhile from the temptation and the urge for destruction and turn it round towards a higher inner adventure that of construction. Yes, the truth that we want to see established in the outer world, let us establish it in ourselves, in each one of us, in our consciousness, in our impulses and activities. We always wanted liberty and equality and fraternity in the world at large, the ideal has not been realised because we did not care to realise it in the consciousness and life of each one of us. In the collective life of mankind that truth will alone become a fact which is a fact in the inner existence and consciousness of every human being.
The inner discovery is indeed a battle and here too a victory has to be won. It needs more than in any physical battle a complete contingent of courage and bravery, calm strength and persevering endurance, skill and energy to gain an absolute success. And there the field is free and vast, one can deploy oneself as largely as possible, move in any direction to any distance as one likes. It is no longer a prison,it is a region where one meets one's soul.
1.11 - FAITH IN MAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
Here we have the modern version of the heroic temptation of
all time, that of the Titans, of Prometheus, of Babel and of Faust;
that of Christ on the mountain; a temptation as old as Earth itself;
as old as the first reflective awakening of Life to the awareness of
its powers. But it is a temptation which is only now entering its crit-
ical phase, now that Man has raised himself to the point of being
1.11 - GOOD AND EVIL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
That the passage from the unity of spiritual to the manifoldness of temporal being is an essential part of the Fall is clearly stated in the Buddhist and Hindu renderings of the Perennial Philosophy. Pain and evil are inseparable from individual existence in a world of time; and, for human beings, there is an intensification of this inevitable pain and evil when the desire is turned towards the self and the many, rather than towards the divine Ground. To this we might speculatively add the opinion that perhaps even subhuman existences may be endowed (both individually and collectively, as kinds and species) with something resembling the power of choice. There is the extraordinary fact that man stands alone that, so far as we can judge, every other species is a species of living fossils, capable only of degeneration and extinction, not of further evolutionary advance. In the phraseology of Scholastic Aristotelianism, matter possesses an appetite for formnot necessarily for the best form, but for form as such. Looking about us in the world of living things, we observe (with a delighted wonder, touched occasionally, it must be admitted, with a certain questioning dismay) the innumerable forms, always beautiful, often extravagantly odd and sometimes even sinister, in which the insatiable appetite of matter has found its satisfaction. Of all this living matter only that which is organized as human beings has succeeded in finding a form capable, at any rate on the mental side, of further development. All the rest is now locked up in forms that can only remain what they are or, if they change, only change for the worse. It looks as though, in the cosmic intelligence test, all living matter, except the human, had succumbed, at one time or another during its biological career, to the temptation of assuming, not the ultimately best, but the immediately most profitable form. By an act of something analogous to free will every species, except the human, has chosen the quick returns of specialization, the present rapture of being perfect, but perfect on a low level of being. The result is that they all stand at the end of evolutionary blind alleys. To the initial cosmic Fall of creation, of multitudinous manifestation in time, they have added the obscurely biological equivalent of mans voluntary Fall. As species, they have chosen the immediate satisfaction of the self rather than the capacity for reunion with the divine Ground. For this wrong choice, the non-human forms of life are punished negatively, by being debarred from realizing the supreme good, to which only the unspecialized and therefore freer, more highly conscious human form is capable. But it must be remembered, of course, that the capacity for supreme good is achieved only at the price of becoming also capable of extreme evil. Animals do not suffer in so many ways, nor, we may feel pretty certain, to the same extent as do men and women. Further, they are quite innocent of that literally diabolic wickedness which, together with sanctity, is one of the distinguishing marks of the human species.
We see then that, for the Perennial Philosophy, good is the separate selfs conformity to, and finally annihilation in, the divine Ground which gives it being; evil, the intensification of separateness, the refusal to know that the Ground exists. This doctrine is, of course, perfectly compatible with the formulation of ethical principles as a series of negative and positive divine commandments, or even in terms of social utility. The crimes which are everywhere forbidden proceed from states of mind which are everywhere condemned as wrong; and these wrong states of mind are, as a matter of empirical fact, absolutely incompatible with that unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, which, according to the Perennial Philosophy, is the supreme good.
1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
He attains aloneness, independence, and becomes free. When one gives up even the ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, there comes entire rejection of enjoyment, of the temptations from celestial beings. When the Yogi has seen all these wonderful powers, and rejected them, he reaches the goal. What are all these powers? Simply manifestations. They are no better than dreams. Even omnipotence is a dream. It depends on the mind. So long as there is a mind it can be understood, but the goal is beyond even the mind.
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There are other dangers too; gods and other beings come to tempt the Yogi. They do not want anyone to be perfectly free. They are jealous, just as we are, and worse than us sometimes. They are very much afraid of losing their places. Those Yogis who do not reach perfection die and become gods; leaving the direct road they go into one of the side streets, and get these powers. Then, again, they have to be born. But he who is strong enough to withstand these temptations and go straight to the goal, becomes free.
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1.11 - The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
present to the future, of disregarding the immediate temptations of
ephemeral pleasure for more distant and lasting sources of
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He could not resist the temptation, and swallowed it, thinking he would get it out somehow later on. The note was got out of him all right, but he was sent to jail for three years. In my guilelessness I used to think that the man had made great spiritual progress. Really, I say it upon my word!
Master's renunciation of money
1.13 - The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is not only an absurd expectation but full of danger. For the vital desire may very well bring in an action of dark or vehement vital powers which hold out before it a promise of immediate fulfilment of its impossible longing; the consequence is likely to be a plunge into many kinds of self-deception, a yielding to the falsehoods and temptations of the forces of darkness, a hunt for supernormal powers, a turning away from the Divine to the
Asuric nature, a fatal self-inflation into an unnatural unhuman and undivine bigness of magnified ego. If the being is small, the nature weak and incapable, there is not this large-scale disaster; but a loss of balance, a mental unhinging and fall into unreason or a vital unhinging and consequent moral aberration or a deviation into some kind of morbid abnormality of the nature may be the untoward consequence. This is not a Yoga in which
1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
During temptation I have felt that this wolf was producing incomprehensible joy, tears and consolation in my soul, but I was really being deceived when I so childishly thought to have fruit from this and not harm.
Every other sin that a man may commit is outside the body, while he who commits impurity sins against his own body,3 and this is certainly because the very substance of the flesh is defiled by pollution, which cannot happen in the other sins.
1.16 - Advantages and Disadvantages of Evocational Magic, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Every genuine magician works with the beings consciously, he is for them a person of certain authority, power and force, owing to his magical development and maturity, his attitude towards the spirit beings is quite different from the attitude of a sorcerer. A magician's influence on a being, too, is quite different, and the dangers to which a magician might be exposed are so small that they need scarcely be mentioned. The magician is subject to only a few temptations by the beings, but since he has achieved the magical equilibrium, nothing can lead him off his way, not even the most tempting projects. The beings acknowledge his authority and regard him as their master, as the image of creation, the image of God, and are quite willing to serve him without ever daring to ask for any rewards for their services. It is different with a necromancer or sorcerer, however, because of his inability to create the necessary authoritative power towards the beings. He is always in danger of losing his equilibrium at the cost of his individuality and magical development.
If a necromancer or sorcerer has a relatively high power of imagination and is able partially to raise up his consciousness, it may happen that, by using magic though barbarous names, he succeeds in having one of his evocations translated into the language of the being and the being he is evoking hears his voice. The next question to arise is whether the being reacts to the evocation and intends to do what the sorcerer wants him to do. For the being at once realizes whether the sorcerer is mature enough and developed enough to be able to exercise coercion or whether it can go easily in opposition. If a positive, good being is involved, it will pity the sorcerer. If the sorcerer has evoked an indifferent and less active being and if the sorcerer's desire, if it were realised, would not harm him, it might, now and then, give a token of sympathy and do what the sorcerer wants done. But if the sorcerer desires anything that might harm him or any other person without being able to take the full responsibility for this, then the being will not react to the sorcerer's evocation. All means of coercion mentioned in various books for the sorcerer's use in order to have the beings to work for him are ineffectual and but mere phrases with only a slight or no effect at all on astral beings. Negative beings, on the other hand, prefer to react to negative and evil intentions and try to help the sorcerer in their realization. But a head of demons also knows quite well that he need not do what the sorcerer wants, if the sorcerer desires something which would debit him too much karmically or which he could not take responsibility for from the karmic point of view. In such a case not even a demon would dare to fulfill the sorcerer's wish, for this being, even though it be a negative one, depends on Divine Providence. It cannot, on its own accord, create vibrations which would cause a chaotic tate in the harmony of a sphere. Therefore it is necessary to point out again and again that a certain degree of magical development and perfection is absolutely necessary for the evocation of the beings of any sphere and in order to be able to place one's consciousness into the relevant sphere or zone and to translate one's thoughts into the metaphorical language or cosmic language so that a being understands them.
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The sorcerer usually realizes during his second or third operation that he is no longer able to get himself into the same state of ecstasy which previously helped him to have a certain influence on the concerned sphere. This is reason enough for a feeling of uneasiness within him, which usually causes him literarily to seize hold of the being appearing to him in order to have his desires realized. The head now appearing to the sorcerer would not at all react to him if he were not sure that the sorcerer's soul and spirit were mature enough for him, and that therefore it pays to try to get both. The head sees the many karmic developments which the sorcerer may have undergone already and during which he has reached a certain degree of intelligence and maturity, and he is therefore certain that the sorcerer will render him good service after his death. The being knows about all this already in its own sphere, while watching the sorcerer carrying out his operations. If it seems advantageous enough, a head, usually a negative one, will appear to the sorcerer, and will try to get the sorcerer for itself at any cost. Depending on the character of the sorcerer, the being will apply the most variable methods, knowing well the most vulnerable points where it can hit the sorcerer. If, for instance, the sorcerer is anyhow fearful, the being will try to frighten him in order to make him obey. If, however, the sorcerer is somehow aware of his spiritual and psychic faculties, the being will try to win him with all kinds of promises, for instance with the promise that it will do anything, etc. But at the same time it will point out that such a thing is not possible without a mutual agreement and will point out the advantages of such a contract. It is then up to the sorcerer to resist the temptations of the being and to oppose it. A fight within the sorcerer's own conscience will start and will develop into a terrible one, for the conscience of a man is the most subtle form of the Divine Providence. If, however, the sorcerer is not willing to listen to the divine warnings, that is to follow his conscience, but supresses it in spite of its repeated appearance, then he becomes a victim of the being by making an agreement or a contract with it.
This theme will certainly interest everybody. Therefore I will examine it more closely from the hermetic angle. Why does a spirit being want to get possession of the soul and spirit of a sorcerer? There are several reasons for this. Firstly, no being, least of all a negative one, will ever do anything for the sorcerer without the hope of getting a relevant reward. The sorcerer is forced by contract to leave the earth-zone after he has cast away his physical body. He is indeed taken away by the devil, as legends state, and must travel to the sphere of that being with which he has made the contract in order to serve there as its servant.
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Here he can again live as a four-pole being and renew his spiritual development. If, in this case, it is necessary for him to return into our physical world, this rebirth will be granted him without any difficulties for in the physical world it is far easier to become purified and to work on one's magical development like other beings. A reincarnated sorcerer is then able to acquire, in our world, great magic power, since he has experience in working with negative powers. Such re-born sorcerers are the born magicians, for they possess inborn magical faculties and do not need to accumulate much knowledge or to undergo a special training in magic. It cannot be denied, however that it could again happen that such a person is overcome by the temptation to misuse these powers and that the same head of spirits may approach him anew, possibly under a different mask, to regain his previous victim with the same intention of taking him again to his sphere after his physical death. Such a sorcerer, however, has a much freer will on this earth and can therefore resist such temptations much better.
His conscience, too, works much better and will warn him more forcefully than does the conscience of a human being with no such personal career. Thus it seldom happens that a sorcerer falls in a second time. Usually he is so purified by his experience that he walks along the true path of magic and is less inclined to take up contacts with demons or negative spirits.
This statement of true facts may be a warning to all truth seeking people not to follow the path of sorcery, for one can see from what has been said above that such a step is a great regression in the spiritual evolution and development of a human being. That all I have said is no fantastically made up story but a sad, true fact that can be checked by any true magician. Are-incarnated sorcerer proceeding along the right path of initiation is exposed to a far greater number of temptations than an average human being who is starting his spiritual development from the beginning.
The planes which formerly bound him try time after time in the most refined manner to get their previous victim again under their control.
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The magician is able to call any being from the astral world without any danger, without becoming dependent on it and without becoming a victim of necromancy. A necromancer is a person with a low degree of spiritual and magical development, whose main object is to get into contact with astral beings of the earth-zone, preferably with dead people. The necromancer will in most cases try to make use of a being from the astral sphere, that is he will either require of such a being certain magical duties in the physical, astral or mental plane or merely try to satisfy his curiosity. For this purpose the necromancer will choose a human being after his physical death who during his life on earth busied himself with any of the secret sciences and who possibly has reached a certain degree of perfection in this. If such a person happens to be a true magician who has followed the true path of initiation and has learned all its laws here on earth, having thus acquired a certain degree of perfection, who noble-minded strove for positive aims and controlled the negative powers, he will, if he thinks it beneficial, appear to the necromancer and point out to him the advantages or disadvantages of his projects and intentions. A true magician will, however, never keep up a constant connection with a necromancer, nor will he try to influence the necromancer in such a manner that he becomes dependent on him. He will always be prepared to warn the necromancer and will give him permission to call him in case of emergency. Furthermore, he will give good advice to the necromancer and initiate him into the laws of the astral sphere, but he will never be prepared to serve the necromancer, or to do whatever he wants, or to fulfill his material desires. Only bad magicians with little experience and an affection for negative powers or mere sorcery will try to maintain a contact with a necromancer or assist him in realizing his desires and to satisfying his curiosity. If the necromancer gets into the sphere and under the control of such a being, he will acquire the same kind of vibration as that being has in the earth-zone and thus becomes a fellow-sufferer. The astral being will then prevent the necromancer from making any progress in his spiritual and magical development and will see that he is never enlightened or blessed with personal advance. The being will then be full of malicious pleasure because it has succeeded in being troublesome to a human being on earth. It remembers the days of its own life on earth, its difficulties and troubles there, the temptations it could not resist, the powers it misused and the lack of chances for its true initiation, and it will also try to hinder the necromancer in his development. The danger that arises for the necromancer in such a case need not be analysed. I will, however, mention the fact that the necromancer may easily be vampirised by such a being and that the being will try to realize in the astral world its own egocentric plans by help of the vampirised powers of the necromancer.
Therefore every scholar is warned not to take up any such contacts and not to make himself dependent on any being. The manner in which a necromancer calls a being from the astral plane rests on two methods. One method is spiritistic: the being is asked to reveal itself by help of mediums; that is by mediumistic writing or by mediums put into a state of trance. This method requires great perseverance until the being is able to take up a direct contact and to appear to the necromancer. The other method is that of evocation: the necromancer takes up contact with the being by help of a picture of the spirit's previous incarnation or by enlivening such a picture until finally the being steps out of it like an elementary, taking on its previous shape. A necromancer does not usually succeed at once, but if he goes on with his work persistently he might, depending on his maturity, development, willpower and imagination, force the being to appear to him visibly.
12.09 - The Story of Dr. Faustus Retold, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But man, the human soul, has to go through hell, that is to say, through trials and tribulations and ordeals in order to reach heaven. We know there are innumerable legends to illustrate the point. You must have read, all of you, stories of saints, how they were tempted and obstructed by hostile forces, the armies of the undivine. The great Buddha before his illumination as he sat under the Bo-tree firmly resolved on pursuing in his inner consciousness the path of realisation till the very end, was surroundedwe should say today, 'gheraoed'by all the varieties of dark forces, forces of ambition, of passion, of attachment, of enjoyment: they pleaded, they threatened, tried to draw him away by violence and trickery and temptation, but his was a great heroic soul, he refused all invitations and threats, unmoved he held fast to his resolution and in the end came out into the vast illumination. To the Christ too, the same thing happened. Satan came to him, showed to him all the luxury and grandeur and majesty that lay at his disposal if he would only consent to follow him. Christ only told him "Get thee behind, Satan" (Apage Satana) and he was free. In the Upanishads also, we know of the story of the boy Nachiketas who wanted to possess the truth, the Immortality, and Yama came to him or rather he came to Yam a and asked for these things. Yama, the King of Immortality, said in effect, a young boy like him need not strive for such abstract things that confuse the mind even of gods, "I will give you better things these beautiful chariots and horses, the resounding musical instruments or these abounding riches and even these beautiful women that take and be happy." You all know Nachiketas, the boy's answer: "Dear Sir, all these good things keep for your good self, let me have the one thing that I need, the Divine Knowledge." I am sure many of our children here will be bold enough to say as Nachiketas did.
In our Puranas too we see whenever and wherever the Rishis assemble and start doing tapasya, the hostiles they are called rakshasasrush in, try to break their tapasya, even kill them. The akshasas are the embodiments of the dark forces, agents and armies of the Devil himself. The Rishis had to seek refuge in the help of the gods, that is to say, take refuge in the strength and sincerity of their souls, that is the only way to safety and security, to the achievement of their goal.
1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Turning to God without turning from self"the formula is absurdly simple; and yet, simple as it is, it explains all the follies and iniquities committed in the name of religion. Those who turn to God without turning from themselves are tempted to evil in several characteristic and easily recognizable ways. They are tempted, first of all, to practice magical rites, by means of which they hope to compel God to answer their petitions and, in general, to serve their private or collective ends. All the ugly business of sacrifice, incantation and what Jesus called vain repetition is a product of this wish to treat God as a means to indefinite self-aggrandisement, rather than as an end to be reached through total self-denial. Next, they are tempted to use the name of God to justify what they do in pursuit of place, power and wealth. And because they believe themselves to have divine justification for their actions, they proceed, with a good conscience, to perpetrate abominations, which nature, left to itself, would be ashamed to own. Throughout recorded history, an incredible sum of mischief has been done by ambitious idealists, self-deluded by their own verbiage and a lust for power, into a conviction that they were acting for the highest good of their fellow men. In the past, the justification for such wickedness was God or the Church, or the True Faith"; today idealists kill and torture and exploit in the name of the Revolution, the New Order, the World of the Common Man, or simply the Future. Finally there are the temptations which arise, when the falsely religious begin to acquire the powers which are the fruit of their pious and magical practices. For, let there be no mistake, sacrifice, incantation and vain repetition actually do produce fruits, especially when practised in conjunction with physical austerities. Men who turn towards God without turning away from themselves do not, of course, reach God; but if they devote themselves energetically enough to their pseudo-religion, they will get results. Some of these results are doubtless the product of auto-suggestion. (It was through vain repetition that Cou got his patients to cure themselves of their diseases.) Others are due, apparently, to that something not ourselves in the psychic medium that something which makes, not necessarily for righteousness, but always for power. Whether this something is a piece of secondh and objectivity, projected into the medium by the individual worshipper and his fellows and predecessors; whether it is a piece of first-hand objectivity, corresponding, on the psychic level, to the data of the material universe; or whether it is a combination of both these things, it is impossible to determine. All that need be said in this place is that people who turn towards God without turning from themselves often seem to acquire a knack of getting their petitions answered and sometimes develop considerable supernormal powers, such as those of psychic healing and extra-sensory perception. But, it may be asked: Is it necessarily a good thing to be able to get ones petitions answered in the way one wants them to be? And how far is it spiritually profitable to be possessed of these miraculous powers? These are questions which were considered in the section on Prayer and will be further discussed in the chapter on The Miraculous.
The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs. How can you object to the? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?
1.21 - IDOLATRY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
To EDUCATED persons the more primitive kinds of idolatry have ceased to be attractive. They find it easy to resist the temptation to believe that particular natural objects are gods, or that certain symbols and images are the very forms of divine entities and as such must be worshipped and propitiated. True, much fetishistic superstition survives even today. But though it survives, it is not considered respectable. Like drinking and prostitution, the primitive forms of idolatry are tolerated, but not approved. Their place in the accredited hierarchy of values is among the lowest.
How different is the case with the developed and more modern forms of idolatry! These have achieved not merely survival, but the highest degree of respectability. They are recommended by men of science as an up-to-date substitute for genuine religion and by many professional religious teachers are equated with the worship of God. All this may be deplorable; but it is not in the least surprising. Our education disparages the more primitive forms of idolatry; but at the same time it disparages, or at the best it ignores, the Perennial Philosophy and the practice of spirituality. In place of mumbo-jumbo at the bottom and of the immanent and transcendent Godhead at the top, it sets up, as objects of admiration, faith and worship, a pantheon of strictly human ideas and ideals. In academic circles and among those who have been subjected to higher education, there are few fetishists and few devout contemplatives; but the enthusiastic devotees of some form of political or social idolatry are as common as blackberries. Significantly enough, I have observed, when making use of university libraries, that books on spiritual religion were taken out much less frequently than was the case in public libraries, patronized in the main by men and women who had not enjoyed the advantages, or suffered under the handicaps, of prolonged academic instruction.
1.22 - EMOTIONALISM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
We see, then, that if it is persisted in, the way of emotional religion may lead, indeed, to a great good, but not to the greatest. But the emotional way opens into the way of unitive knowledge, and those who care to go on in this other way are well prepared for their task if they have used the emotional approach without succumbing to the temptations which have beset them on the way. Only the perfectly selfless and enlightened can do good that does not, in some way or other, have to be paid for by actual or potential evils. The religious systems of the world have been built up, in the main, by men and women who were not completely selfless or enlightened. Hence all religions have had their dark and even frightful aspects, while the good they do is rarely gratuitous, but must, in most cases, be paid for, either on the nail or by instalments. The emotion-rousing doctrines and practices, which play so important a part in all the worlds organized religions, are no exception to this rule. They do good, but not gratuitously. The price paid varies according to the nature of the individual worshippers. Some of these choose to wallow in emotionalism and, becoming idolaters of feeling, pay for the good of their religion by a spiritual evil that may actually outweigh that good. Others resist the temptation to self-enhancement and go forward to the mortification of self, including the selfs emotional side, and to the worship of God rather than of their own feelings and fancies about God. The further they go in this direction, the less they have to pay for the good which emotionalism brought them and which, but for emotionalism, most of them might never have had.
next chapter: 1.23 - THE MIRACULOUS
1.23 - On mad price, and, in the same Step, on unclean and blasphemous thoughts., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
52. One careful monk who was troubled by this demon wore out his flesh for twenty years by fasts and vigils. But as he felt no benefit, he wrote his temptation on a card and went to a certain holy man and gave him the card and bowed his face to the earth, not daring to look up. As soon as the elder had read it he smiled and, raising the brother, he said to him: Lay your hand on my neck, son. And when the brother had done that, the great man said: On my neck, brother, be this sin, for as many years as it may or may not be active in you; only after this, ignore it. And this monk assured me that even before he had left the elders cell, his infirmity had gone. The man who had been tempted in this way told me this himself, offering thanksgiving to God.
1 St. Matthew iv, 9.
1.23 - THE MIRACULOUS, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Revelations are the aberration of faith; they are an amusement that spoils simplicity in relation to God, that embarrasses the soul and makes it swerve from its directness in relation to God. They distract the soul and occupy it with other things than God. Special illuminations, auditions, prophecies and the rest are marks of weakness in a soul that cannot support the assaults of temptation or of anxiety about the future and Gods judgment upon it. Prophecies are also marks of creaturely curiosity in a soul to whom God is indulgent and to whom, as a father to his importunate child, he gives a few trifling sweet-meats to satisfy its appetite.
J. J. Olier
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
There is another disadvantage inherent in any system of organized sacramentalism, and that is that it gives to the priestly caste a power which it is all too natural for them to abuse. In a society which has been taught that salvation is exclusively or mainly through certain sacraments, and that these sacraments can be administered effectively only by a professional priesthood, that professional priesthood will possess an enormous coercive power. The possession of such power is a standing temptation to use it for individual satisfaction and corporate aggrandizement. To a temptation of this kind, if repeated often enough, most human beings who are not saints almost inevitably succumb. That is why Christ taught his disciples to pray that they should not be led into temptation. This is, or should be, the guiding principle of all social reformto organize the economic, political and social relationships between human beings in such a way that there shall be, for any given individual or group within the society, a minimum of temptations to covetousness, pride, cruelty and lust for power. Men and women being what they are, it is only by reducing the number and intensity of temptations that human societies can be, in some measure at least, delivered from evil. Now, the sort of temptations, to which a priestly caste is exposed in a society that accepts a predominantly sacramental religion, are such that none but the most saintly persons can be expected consistently to resist them. What happens when ministers of religion are led into these temptations is clearly illustrated by the history of the Roman church. Because Catholic Christianity taught a version of the Perennial Philosophy, it produced a succession of great saints. But because the Perennial Philosophy was overlaid with an excessive amount of sacramentalism and with an idolatrous preoccupation with things in time, the less saintly members of its hierarchy were exposed to enormous and quite unnecessary temptations and, duly succumbing to them, launched out into persecution, simony, power politics, secret diplomacy, high finance and collaboration with despots.
I very much doubt whether, since the Lord by his grace brought me into the faith of his dear Son, I have ever broken bread or drunk wine, even in the ordinary course of life, without remembrance of, and some devout feeling regarding, the broken body and the blood-shedding of my dear Lord and Saviour.
1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
35. There are some who all their lives use the bad deeds previously done by them, and for which they had received forgiveness, as a motive for humility, thereby driving out their vain self-esteem. Others, having in mind Christs passion, regard themselves always as debtors. Others hold themselves cheap for their daily defects. Others as a result of their besetting temptations, infirmities and sins have mortified their pride. Others for want of graces have appropriated the mother of graces (i.e. humility). There are also people (if they still exist) who for the sake of the very gifts of God, in the measure that they receive them, humble themselves and so live as to account themselves unworthy of such wealth, and each day add it to their debt. Such is humility, such is beatitude, such is the perfect reward!
36. When you see or hear that someone has in a few years acquired the most sublime dispassion, then conclude that he travelled by no other way than by this blessed short-cut.
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is hardly necessary to add that this method has, like every other, its dangers as well as its advantages. For those who employ it there is a standing temptation to forget the end in the all too squalidly personal meansto become absorbed in a whitewashing or remorseful essay in autobiography to the exclusion of the pure Divinity, before whom the angry ape played all the fantastic tricks which he now so relishingly remembers.
We come now to what may be called the spiritual exercises of daily life. The problem, here, is simple enoughhow to keep oneself reminded, during the hours of work and recreation, that there is a good deal more to the universe than that which meets the eye of one absorbed in business or pleasure? There is no single solution to this problem. Some kinds of work and recreation are so simple and unexactive that they permit of continuous repetition of sacred name or phrase, unbroken thought about divine Reality, or, what is still better, uninterrupted mental silence and alert passivity. Such occupations as were the daily task of Brother Lawrence (whose practice of the presence of God has enjoyed a kind of celebrity in circles otherwise completely uninterested in mental prayer or spiritual exercises) were almost all of this simple and unexacting kind. But there are other tasks too complex to admit of this constant recollectedness. Thus, to quote Eckhart, a celebrant of the mass who is over-intent on recollection is liable to make mistakes. The best way is to try to concentrate the mind before and afterwards, but, when saying it, to do so quite straightforwardly. This advice applies to any occupation demanding undivided attention. But undivided attention is seldom demanded and is with difficulty sustained for long periods at a stretch. There are always intervals of relaxation. Everyone is free to choose whether these intervals shall be filled with day-dreaming or with something better.
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Let those who are infirm in soul recognize Gods visitation from their bodily circumstances, dangers and outward temptations; but the perfect recognize it from the presence of the Holy Spirit and an accession of spiritual gifts.
There is a demon who comes to us when we are lying in bed and shoots at us evil and dirty thoughts to make us shrink from rising for prayer and from taking up arms against it, and makes us fall asleep with these foul thoughts and then have foul dreams too.
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In all the temptations that happen to us the devils struggle to make us say or do something improper. And if they cannot do that, they stand quietly and suggest that we should offer God arrogant thanksgiving.
Those whose minds are on things above, after the separation of soul and body, ascend on high in two parts;2 but those whose minds are on things below, go below. For souls separated from the body there is no intermediate place. Of all Gods creations only the soul has its being in something else (in a body) and not in itself; and it is wonderful how it can exist outside that in which it received being.
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Stupendous, truly stupendous and incomprehensible is the wickedness of the evil spirits. It is not seen by many, and I think that even those few see it only in part. Thus, how is it that while living in luxury and plenty we keep vigil and do not sleep, and why while fasting and exhausting ourselves with labours are we pitifully overpowered by drowsiness? Or why does our heart become hard while abiding in silence? And why, while sitting among our companions, do we come to compunction? When we are hungry why are we tempted by dreams? Yet when sated we do not experience these temptations. In poverty we become dark and incapable of compunction; but if we drink wine we are happy and easily come to compunction. He who can do so in the Lord, let him bring light to the unenlightened in this matter. For we are not enlightened about this. At least we can say that such a change does not always come from the demons. And this sometimes happens to me, I know not how,
1 Yet the devil fell from heaven.
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If Christ, although omnipotent, as man fled bodily from Herod, then let the rash learn not to hurl themselves into temptations. For it is said: Let not thy foot be moved, nor him (the angel) who keeps thee slumber.8
Vanity or conceit twines itself round courage just as bindweed twines round cypress.
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2 By three hours (according to Elias of Crete) is meant three kinds, three periods of temptation: first, ambition or love of glory; second, sensuality or love of pleasure; and third, cupidity or love of money (i.e. world, flesh, devil).
3 Psalm ciii, 19.
1.28 - On holy and blessed prayer, mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
1. Prayer by reason of its nature is the converse and union of man with God, and by reason of its action upholds the world and brings about reconciliation with God; it is the mother and also the daughter of tears, the propitiation for sins, a bridge over temptations, a wall against afflictions, a crushing of conflicts, work of angels, food of all the spiritual beings, future gladness, boundless activity, the spring of virtues, the source of graces, invisible progress, food of the soul, the enlightening of the mind, an axe for despair, a demonstration of hope, the annulling of sorrow, the wealth of monks, the treasure of solitaries, the reduction of anger, the mirror of progress, the realization of success, a proof of ones condition, a revelation of the future, a sign of glory. For him who truly prays, prayer is the court, the judgment hall and the tribunal of the Lord before the judgment to come.
2. Let us rise and listen to what that holy queen of the virtues cries with a loud voice and says to us: Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and you shall find rest for your souls and healing for your wounds. For My yoke is easy6 and is a sovereign remedy for great sins.
--
30. A convict does not fear his sentence of punishment so much as a fervent man of prayer fears this duty of prayer. So if he is wise and shrewd, by remembering this he can avoid every reproach, and anger, and worry, and interruption, and affliction, and satiety, and temptation, and distracting thought.
31. Prepare yourself for your set times of prayer by unceasing prayer in your soul, and you will soon make progress. I have seen those who shone in obedience and who tried, as far as they could, to keep in mind the remembrance of God, and the moment they stood in prayer they were at once masters of their minds, and shed streams of tears; because they were prepared for this beforeh and by holy obedience.
1.37 - Describes the excellence of this prayer called the Paternoster, and the many ways in which we shall find consolation in it., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
necessary to us all while we live in this exile: "And lead us not, Lord, into temptation, but deliver
us from evil."
1.38 - Treats of the great need which we have to beseech the Eternal Father to grant us what we ask in these words: Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Explains certain temptations. This chapter is noteworthy., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
object:1.38 - Treats of the great need which we have to beseech the Eternal Father to grant us what we ask in these words: Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Explains certain temptations. This chapter is noteworthy.
author class:Saint Teresa of Avila
--
deliver them from trials, temptations, persecutions and conflicts-and that is another sure and
striking sign that these favours and this contemplation which His Majesty gives them are coming
--
life-blood and put an end to our virtues and we go on yielding to temptation without knowing it.
From these enemies let us pray the Lord often, in the Paternoster, to deliver us: may He not allow
us to run into temptations which deceive us; may their poison be detected; and may light and truth
132
--
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Lit.: "gains", as also in the next paragraph. E. has: "because they have hopes of becoming rich." The reference in both manuscripts
--
himself and others be prevented. But I warn you that this temptation is full of peril. I know a great
deal about it from experience, so I can describe it to you, though not as well as I should like. What
--
and to beseech the Eternal Father not to allow us to fall into temptation.
There is something else, too, which I want to tell you. If we think the Lord has given us a certain
--
The devil has yet another temptation, which is to make us appear very poor in spirit: we are in
the habit of saying that we want nothing and care nothing about anything: but as soon as the chance
--
is very important always to be on the watch and to realize that this is a temptation, both in the things
I have referred to and in many others. For when the Lord really gives one of these solid virtues, it
--
we were going to say, the devil could not possibly lead us into that temptation-not even in twenty
years, or in our entire lifetime-for we should see that we were deceiving the whole world, and
--
this is a temptation, as regards both the virtue I have spoken of and all the rest; for when we really
have one of these solid virtues, it brings all the rest in its train: that is a very well-known fact.
1.39 - Continues the same subject and gives counsels concerning different kinds of temptation. Suggests two remedies by which we may be freed from temptations.135, #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
object:1.39 - Continues the same subject and gives counsels concerning different kinds of temptation. Suggests two remedies by which we may be freed from temptations.135
author class:Saint Teresa of Avila
--
yourselves so wicked may be humility and virtue and at other times a very great temptation. I have
134
--
of mind is the result of temptation, you will be unable to do even this, for it will not allow you to
quiet your thoughts or to fix them on anything but will only weary you the more: it will be a great
thing if you can recognize it as a temptation. This is what happens when we perform excessive
penances in order to make ourselves believe that, because of what we are doing, we are more
--
to give them up and do not obey, that is a clear case of temptation. Always try to obey, however
much it may hurt you to do so, for that is the greatest possible perfection.
There is another very dangerous kind of temptation: a feeling of security caused by the belief
that we shall never again return to our past faults and to the pleasures of the world. "I know all
--
from the things of God." If this temptation comes to beginners it is very serious; for, having this
sense of security, they think nothing of running once more into occasions of sin. They soon come
--
of ours to lead us into temptations? If attacks are made upon us publicly, we shall easily surmount
127
--
is a safe one and you will the more readily escape from temptation if you are near the Lord than
if you are far away from Him. Beseech and entreat this of Him, as you do so many times each day
14.06 - Liberty, Self-Control and Friendship, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And I wrote, "Our best friend is he who loves us in our best part." In a more positive way, I would say: he who encourages you to descend to the lowest level in you, who drives you to do stupid things with him or become vicious along with him or approves all that is vile in you is not your friend. And yet, very often, much too often, you make a friend of him with whom you do not feel uneasy when you are below your own self. You associate with those who run about instead of going to school, who would steal fruits from gardens, those who poke fun at their teachers and who do all sorts of nasty things. That is why I said, "Such people are not your good friends". But they are the friends who are very comfortable, because they never give you the impression that you are in the wrong. Whereas if one comes and tells you, "I say, instead of roaming about doing nothing or doing stupid things, why not go to your class, don't you think it would be better?" To such a person you would generally reply, "you are troublesome, you are not my friend." One should regard him only as his best friend who refuses to take part in a bad or ugly act, who encourages you to resist all lower temptations. He is indeed your friend."
. . . One should regard him only as his best friend who refuses to take part in a bad or ugly act, who encourages you to resist all lower temptations. He is indeed your friend.
It is with him that you should associate and not with one who streng thens yourbad propensities and takes part in your bad actions."
1.40 - Describes how, by striving always to walk in the love and fear of God, we shall travel safely amid all these temptations., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
object:1.40 - Describes how, by striving always to walk in the love and fear of God, we shall travel safely amid all these temptations.
author class:Saint Teresa of Avila
--
to lead them into temptation, into which, I fear, they will certainly fall unless they bear this sign.
But if they walk humbly and strive to discover the truth and do as their confessor bids them and
--
not unwittingly fall into temptation.
1.41 - Speaks of the fear of God and of how we must keep ourselves from venial sins., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
us always beseech God that temptation may not be strong enough for us to offend Him but that He
may send it to us in proportion to the strength which He gives us to conquer it. If we keep a pure
--
will do nothing that can harm us, however much they lead us into temptation and lay secret snares
for us.
--
dangerous state of mind, leading to great uneasiness and to continual temptation, because it is unfair
to our neighbour. It is very wrong to think that everyone who does not follow in your own timorous
1.42 - Treats of these last words of the Paternoster Sed libera nos a malo. Amen. But deliver us from evil. Amen., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
for so long as we live, we can be free from numerous temptations and imperfections and even sins;
for it is said that whosoever thinks himself to be without sin deceives himself, and that is true. But
1.66 - Vampires, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
So musing, I rang you up for details. Vampires, you say, might be a temptation to yourself, or they might sap your energy. Very good. I will tell you the little I know.
Listen to Eliphas Lvi! He warns us against a type of person, fearless and cold-blooded, who seems to have the power to cast a sudden chill, merely by entering the room, upon the gayest party ever assembled.
1.68 - The God-Letters, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Never forget the abiding temptation of men of science, the hidden rocks on which so many have been wrecked, to generalize on insufficient data. May the gods keep us from that! I dread it more than all the other snags put together.
With all due caution, therefore, let us attack our puzzle from the other end; let us see what astral experiment tells us about the philology of it!
1.74 - Obstacles on the Path, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
To atone? Not a catalogue, which would be interminable; not a classification, which would be impossible, save in the roughest terms; nothing but a few short notes, possibly an anecdote or so. Just a tickle or a dram of schnapps, to enliven the proceedings ordeals temptations that sort of thing. A general Khabardar karo! With now and then a snappy Achtung!
Oh, curse this mind of mine! I just can't help running to hide under the broad skirts of the Qabalah! It's Disk, Sword, Cup and Wand again! Sorry, but c'est trop fort pour moi.
1951-02-08 - Unifying the being - ideas of good and bad - Miracles - determinism - Supreme Will - Distinguishing the voice of the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This is a temptation that every teacher meets at each step, for the very simple reason that ordinary humanity, in a general way, not being in personal contact with the divine powers, understands nothing of what an illumined consciousness may be and asks for material proofs. It is on this demand that most religions are established and, for reasons which I may very frankly call political, they have put at the origin of their religion a more or less considerable number of miracles as having been performed by the founders, and they have thus more or less crudely encouraged among ignorant people the taste, the necessity for seeing what they call miracles in order to believe in the divine power of a person. This is an extraordinary ignorance, because it is not at all necessary to have a divine power or consciousness to perform miracles. It is infinitely more easy to perform miracles with the help of small entities of the vital world who are material enough to be in touch with the physical world and act upon it, than to live in the consciousness of the higher regions and to work upon Nature only through the intermediary of all the other domains. It has been repeated over and over again to all human intellects that the proof of a beings divinity is that he can raise the dead, cure maladies, and do many other things of the same kind (except making a fool wise).1 Well, I guarantee that this is not a proof; it proves only one thing, that these Masters are in contact with the powers of the vital world and that with the help of those beings they can perform these miracles, thats all. If one relies upon that to recognise the superiority of a man, one would make a glaring mistake. Naturally, there are other religions which are established on revelations made to their founders. These revelations are more or less happy mental transcriptions of the knowledge they received. This is already of a higher order but it is not yet a proof. And I would finally say, the human demand for proofs is not at all favourable to ones development. Because the true divine power has organised the world according to a certain plan and in this plan there was no question of things happening in an illogical way; otherwise from the very beginning the world would have been illogical and it is not so. Men imagine for the most part one of two things, either that there is a material world to which they belong, that all comes from there, all returns there and all ends therethese are the unbelieversor, the believers, most of them, that there is something which they call God and then the physical world, and that this physical world is the creation of that God who knows what he is doing or does what he wants; and the confusion lies in saying that everything happens by a kind of arbitrariness, natural or supernatural. There are very few people who know that there exists in the universe an infinite number of gradations and that each one of these gradations has its own reality, its own life, its own law, its own determinism, and that the creation did not come about like that, by an arbitrary will, in an arbitrary way but is a deploying of consciousness and each thing has evolved as a logical result of the preceding one. I am telling you all this as simply as I can, you see, it is a very incomplete expression, but if I wanted to tell you the story exactly as it is, it would be a little difficult to make you understand. Only I would like you to know my conclusion (I have already spoken about it several times, more or less in detail), it is this: each one of these numberless regions has its own very logical determinismeverything proceeds from cause to effect; but these worlds, although differentiated, are not separate from each other and, by numerous processes which we may study, the inner or higher worlds are in constant contact with the lower or external worlds and act upon these, so that the determinism of one changes the determinism of the other. If you take the purely material domain, for instance, and if you notice that the material laws, the purely material laws are altered by something all of a sudden, you ought to say that it was a miracle, because there is a rupture of the determinism of one plane through the intervention of another, but usually we do not call this a miracle. For example, when the human will intervenes and changes something, that seems to you quite natural, because you have been accustomed to it from your childhood; you remember, dont you, the example I gave you the other day: a stone falls according to the law of its own determinism, but you wish to interrupt its fall and you stretch out your hand and catch it; well you ought to call this a miracle, but you dont because you are used to it (but a rat or a dog would perhaps call it a miracle if they could speak). And note that it is the same for what people call a miracle; they speak of a miracle because they are absolutely ignorant, unaware of the gradations between the will which wants to express itself and the plane on which it expresses itself. When they have a mental or a vital will, the thing seems quite natural to them, but when it is a question of the will of a higher world the world of the gods or of a higher entitywhich all of a sudden upsets all your little organisation, that seems to you a miracle. But it is a miracle simply because you are unable to follow the gradations by which the phenomenon took place. Therefore, the Supreme Will, that which comes from the very highest region, if you saw it in its logical action, if you were aware of it continually, it would seem to you altogether natural. You can express this in two ways: either say, It is quite natural, it is like this that things must happen, it is only an expression of the divine Will, or, each time you see on the material plane an intervention coming from another plane, you ought to say, It is miraculous! So I may say with certainty that people who want to see miracles are people who cherish their ignorance! You understand my logic, dont you? These people love their ignorance, they insist upon seeing miracles and being astounded! And that is why people who have done yoga seriously consider it altogether fatal to encourage this tendency; hence it is forbidden.
There is a miracle because you do not give people time to see the procedure by which you do things, you do not show them the stages. Thus, some men have reached higher mental regions and do not need to follow step by step all the gradations of thought; they can jump from one idea to a far distant inference without the intermediary links; this is usually called intuition (it is not altogether an intuition; it is that the idea, to begin with, is at a great height and from there these people can see while descending the whole totality of things and consequences without passing through all the gradations as ordinary human thought is obliged to do). It is an experience I have had; when I used to speak with Sri Aurobindo, we never had the need to go through intermediary ideas; he said one thing and I saw the far off result; we used to talk always like that, and if a person had happened to be present at our conversations he would have said, What are they talking about! But for us, you know, it was as clear as a continuous sentence. You could call that a mental miracleit was not a miracle, it was simply that Sri Aurobindo had the vision of the totality of mental phenomena and hence we had no need to waste a good deal of time in going through all the gradations. For any person capable of following the line, the thing would have been quite natural and logical; for ignorant people it was a miracle.
1955-11-09 - Personal effort, egoistic mind - Man is like a public square - Natures work - Ego needed for formation of individual - Adverse forces needed to make man sincere - Determinisms of different planes, miracles, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When the world is ready to receive the new creation, the adverse forces will disappear. But so long as the world needs to be tempted, kneaded, churned in order to be prepared, the adverse forces will be there to be the temptation and that which strikes you, pushes you, prevents you from sleeping, compels you to be absolutely sincere.
A being that is absolutely sincere becomes the master of the adverse forces. But so long as there is egoism in a being or pride or ill-will, it will always be the object of temptation, of attack; and it will always be fully subject to this constant conflict with what, under the appearance of hostile beings, toils in spite of itself at the divine Work.
The time is not absolutely determined. I have already explained this to you several times. There are many fields of consciousness, zones of consciousness superimposed upon one another; and in each one of these fields of consciousness or action there is a determinism which seems absolute. But the intervention in one field of even the next higher field, like the intervention of the vital in the physical, introduces the determinism of the vital in that of the physical, and necessarily transforms the determinism of the physical. And if through aspiration, the inner will, self-giving and true surrender one can enter into contact with the higher regions or even the supreme region, from up there the supreme determinism will come down and transform all the intermediate determinisms and it will be able to bring about in a so-to-say almost inexistent span of time what would have otherwise taken either years or lives to be accomplished. But this is the only way.
1957-03-13 - Our best friend, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We dont like the company of someone who has a contagious disease, and avoid him carefully; generally he is segregated so that it does not spread. But the contagion of vice and bad behaviour, the contagion of depravity, falsehood and what is base, is infinitely more dangerous than the contagion of any disease, and this is what must be very carefully avoided. You must consider as your best friend the one who tells you that he does not wish to participate in any bad or ugly act, the one who gives you courage to resist low temptations; he is a friend. He is the one you must associate with and not someone with whom you have fun and who streng thens your evil propensities. Thats all.
Now, we wont labour the point and I hope that those I have in mind will understand what I have said.
1958-04-02 - Correcting a mistake, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it is quite obvious that if one chooses to be on the side of the anti-divine forces or is so weak and inconsistent that one cant resist the temptation to be on their side, it is infinitely more serious from the psychological point of view. This means that somewhere something has been corrupted: either an adverse force is already established in you or else you have an innate sympathy for these forces. And it is much more difficult to correct that than to correct an ignorance.
Correcting an ignorance is like eliminating darkness: you light a lamp, the darkness disappears. But to make a mistake once again when you know it is a mistake, is as if someone lighted a lamp and you deliberately put it out. That corresponds exactly to bringing the darkness back deliberately. For the argument of weakness does not hold. The divine Grace is always there to help those who have decided to correct themselves, and they cannot say, I am too weak to correct myself. They can say that they still havent taken the resolution to correct themselves, that somewhere in the being there is something that has not decided to do it, and that is what is serious.
1958 10 10, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if you had a total vision, however brief, you would not be able to resist the temptation of making the effort needed to realise it. But, in fact, the total vision is exceptional, and that is why Sri Aurobindo says to us: If mankind only
To tell the truth, it very seldom happens that those who are ready, who are undoubtedly meant for realisation, do not have, at a certain moment in their lives, even if only for a few seconds, the experience of what this realisation is.
--
To conquer it, one must be a mighty warrior. One must struggle against all the obscurities of Nature, against all her tricks, all her temptations.
Why does she do this? It is as if she were moving away from her own goal. But I have already explained this to you many times. Nature knows very well where she is going and what the outcome is. She wants it, but in her own way. She does not feel that any time is being wasted. She has all eternity before her. She wants to follow her own way as she likes, meandering as much as she likes, going back on her tracks, straying from the straight path, starting the same thing all over again several times to see what will happen. And these enlightened cranks, who want to get there at once, as soon as possible, who thirst for truth, light, beauty, balance they bother her, they urge her on, they tell her that she is wasting her time. Her time! She always replies, But I have all eternity before me. Am I in a hurry? Why are you in such a hurry? And again, with a smile: Your haste is all too human; widen yourselves, become infinite, be eternal, and you will no longer be in a hurry.
1970 01 25, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
303The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.
304If a woman has tempted thee, is it her fault or thine? Be not a fool and a self-deceiver.
1970 04 07, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
460I hated the devil and was sick with his temptations and tortures; and I could not tell why the voice in his departing words was so sweet that when he returned often and offered himself to me, it was with sorrow I refused him. Then I discovered it was Krishna at His tricks and my hate was changed into laughter.
461They explained the evil in the world by saying that Satan had prevailed against God; but I think more proudly of my Beloved. I believe that nothing is done but by His will in heaven or hell, on earth or on the waters.
1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
I come now once more to a place where the temptation to hesitate, or to
hint rather than state, is very strong. It is necessary, however, to
1f.lovecraft - The Diary of Alonzo Typer, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
lower depths. Last night the temptation was too strong, and in the
black small hours I descended once more into that nitrous, hellish
1f.lovecraft - The Shadow out of Time, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
And then the morbid temptation to look down at myself became greater
and greater, till one night I could not resist it. At first my downward
1f.lovecraft - Two Black Bottles, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
room, he said, behind a painting of the temptation of Christ which
adorned the rear wall of the church, he would glare at Vanderhoof while
1.fs - Elegy On The Death Of A Young Man, #Schiller - Poems, #Friedrich Schiller, #Poetry
And temptation vomit poison fell,
O'er the wrangle on the Pharisee,
1.hs - A New World, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery Original Language Persian/Farsi Let's offer flowers, pour a cup of libation, split open the skies and start anew on creation. If the forces of grief invade our lovers' veins, cupbearer and I will wash away this temptation. With rose water we'll mellow crimson wine's bitter cup; we'll sugar the fire to sweeten smoke's emanation. Take this fine lyre, musician, strike up a love song; let's dance, sing all night, go wild in celebration. As dust, O West Wind, let us rise to the Heavens, floating free in Creator's glow of elation. If mind desires to return while heart cries to stay, here's a quarrel for love's deliberation. Alas, these words and songs go for naught in this land; come, Hafez, let's create a new generation. [1509.jpg] -- from The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez: Teachings of the Philosopher of Love, by Haleh Pourafzal / Roger Montgomery
1.ia - Modification Of The R Poem, #Arabi - Poems, #Ibn Arabi, #Sufism
Their hearts are free of whispering temptations
So accompany them and show proper manners in their councils
1.jk - Endymion - Book III, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
This fierce temptation went: and thou may'st not
Exclaim, How then, was Scylla quite forgot?
1.jr - My Mother Was Fortune, My Father Generosity And Bounty, #Rumi - Poems, #Jalaluddin Rumi, #Poetry
should the temptation of gold and silver waylay me?
I have an idol such that, were his sweet scent scattered
1.lb - Confessional, #Li Bai - Poems, #Li Bai, #Poetry
the temptation of her advances?
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
1.lovecraft - Lines On General Robert Edward Lee, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
And shunn'd temptation for his native State!
Thus Washington his monarch's rule o'erturned
1.rb - Paracelsus - Part III - Paracelsus, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
You know not what temptation is, nor how
'T is like to ply men in the sickliest part.
1.rb - The Italian In England, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
And no temptation to betray.
But when I saw that woman's face,
1.sfa - Prayer Inspired by the Our Father, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP & Ignatius C. Brady, OFM Original Language Italian O OUR most holy FATHER, Our Creator, Redeemer, Consoler, and Savior WHO ARE IN HEAVEN: In the angels and in the saints, Enlightening them to love, because You, Lord, are light Inflaming them to love, because You, Lord, are love Dwelling in them and filling them with happiness, because You, Lord, are the Supreme Good, the Eternal Good from Whom comes all good without Whom there is no good. HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME: May our knowledge of You become ever clearer That we may know the breadth of Your blessings the length of Your promises the height of Your majesty the depths of Your judgments YOUR KINGDOM COME: So that You may rule in us through Your grace and enable us to come to Your kingdom where there is an unclouded vision of You a perfect love of You a blessed companionship with You an eternal enjoyment of You YOUR WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: That we may love you with our whole heart by always thinking of You with our whole soul by always desiring You with our whole mind by directing all our intentions to You and by seeking Your glory in everything and with our whole strength by spending all our energies and affections of soul and body in the service of Your love and of nothing else and may we love our neighbors as ourselves by drawing them all with our whole strength to Your love by rejoicing in the good fortunes of others as well as our own and by sympathizing with the misfortunes of others and by giving offense to no one GIVE US THIS DAY: in memory and understanding and reverence of the love which our Lord Jesus Christ had for us and of those things which He said and did and suffered for us OUR DAILY BREAD Your own Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES: Through Your ineffable mercy through the power of the Passion of Your Beloved Son together with the merits and intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all Your chosen ones AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US: And whatever we do not forgive perfectly, do you, Lord, enable us to forgive to the full so that we may truly love our enemies and fervently intercede for them before You returning no one evil for evil and striving to help everyone in You AND LEAD US NOT INTO temptation Hidden or obvious Sudden or persistent BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL Past, present and to come. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. [1495.jpg] -- from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works: The Classics of Western Spirituality, Translated by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP / Translated by Ignatius C. Brady, OFM <
1.sfa - The Salutation of the Virtues, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP & Ignatius C. Brady, OFM Original Language Italian Hail, Queen Wisdom, may the Lord protect you with your sister, holy pure Simplicity. Lady, holy Poverty, may the Lord protect you with your sister, holy Humility. Lady, holy Charity, may the Lord protect you with your sister, holy Obedience. O most holy Virtues, may the Lord protect all of you, from Whom you come and proceed. There is surely no one in the entire world who can possess any one of you unless he dies first. Whoever possesses one of you and does not offend the others, possesses all. And each one destroys vices and sins. Holy Wisdom destroys Satan and all his subtlety. Pure holy Simplicity destroys all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the body. Holy Poverty destroys the desire of riches and avarice and the cares of this world. Holy Humility destroys pride and all the people who are in the world and all the things that belong to the world. Holy Charity destroys every temptation of the devil and of the flesh and every carnal fear. Holy Obedience destroys every wish of the body and of the flesh and binds its mortified body to obedience of the Spirit and to obedience of one's brother and the person who possesses her is subject and submissive to all persons in the world and not to man only but even to all beasts and wild animals so that they may do whatever they want with him inasmuch as it has been given to them from above by the Lord. [1495.jpg] -- from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works: The Classics of Western Spirituality, Translated by Regis J. Armstrong, OFM CAP / Translated by Ignatius C. Brady, OFM <
1.wby - An Acre Of Grass, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
My temptation is quiet.
Here at life's end
1.ww - A Whirl-Blast From Behind The Hill, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
That scorns temptation; power defies
Where mutual love is not;
1.ww - Book Fifth-Books, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
In spite of all temptation, we preserved
Religiously that vow; but firmness failed,
1.ww - Michael- A Pastoral Poem, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
And all temptation, Luke, I pray that thou
May'st bear in mind the life thy Fathers lived,
1.ww - Ode to Duty, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
From vain temptations dost set free;
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!
1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Safe from temptation, and from danger far?
Strains followed of acknowledgment addressed
1.ww - The Excursion- V- Book Fouth- Despondency Corrected, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Idle temptations; open vanities,
Ephemeral offspring of the unblushing world;
1.ww - The Recluse - Book First, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
So welcome, no temptation half so dear
As that which urged me to a daring feat,
1.ww - To The Same Flower (Second Poem), #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Of all temptations;
A queen in crown of rubies drest;
2.01 - War., #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
1.: Souls in the second mansions. 2. Their state. 3. Their sufferings. 4. They cannot get rid of their imperfections. 5. How God calls these souls. 6. Perseverance is essential. 7. temptations of the devil. 8. Delusion of earthly joys. 9. God alone to be loved. 10. Reasons for continuing the journey. 11. War fare of the devil. 12. Importance of choice of friends. 13. Valour required. 14. Presumption of expecting spiritual consolations at first. 15. In the Cross is strength. 16. Our falls should raise us higher. 17. Confidence and perseverance. 18. Recollection. 19. Why we must practise prayer. 20. Meditation kindles love.
1.: Now let us consider which are the souls that enter the second mansions, and what they do there: I do not wish to enlarge on this subject, having already treated it very fully elsewhere,1' for I could not avoid repeating myself, as my memory is very bad. If I could state my ideas in another form they would not weary you, for we never tire of reading books on this subject, numerous as they are.
--
13.: Let the Christian be valiant; let him not be like those who lay down to drink from the brook when they went to battle (I do not remember when).5' Let him resolve to go forth to combat with the host of demons, and be convinced that there is no better weapon than the cross. I have already said,6' yet it is of such importance that I repeat it here: let no one think on starting of the reward to be reaped: this would be a very ignoble way of commencing such a large and stately building. If built on sand it would soon fall down.7' Souls who acted thus would continually suffer from discouragement and temptations, for in these mansions no manna rains;8' farther on, the soul is pleased with all that comes, because it desires nothing but what God wills.
14.: What a farce it is! Here are we, with a thousand obstacles, drawbacks, and imperfections within ourselves, our virtues so newly born that they have scarcely the strength to act (and God grant that they exist at all!) yet we are not ashamed to expect sweetness in prayer and to complain of feeling dryness.9
--
20.: If we never look up at Him and reflect on what we owe Him for having died for us, I do not understand how we can know Him, or perform good deeds in His service. What value is there in faith without works? and what are they worth if they are not united to the merits of Jesus Christ, our only good? What would incite us to love our Lord unless we thought of Him? May He give us grace to understand how much we cost Him; that 'the servant is not above his lord'21 ; that we must toil for Him if we would enjoy His glory; and prayer is a necessity to prevent us from constantly falling into temptation.22
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
from their presence, which is simply a flight from temptation.
The Karmayogin has to remain in the world & conquer it; he is
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Do you know how it looks for a sannysi to accept money or to be attached to an object of temptation? It is as if a brahmin widow who had practised continence and lived on simple boiled rice and vegetables and milk for many years, were suddenly to accept an untouchable as her paramour. (All look stunned.)
"There was a low-caste woman named Bhagi Teli in our part of the country. She had many disciples and devotees. Finding that she, a sudra, was being saluted by people, the landlord became jealous and engaged a wicked man to tempt her. He succeeded in corrupting her and all her spiritual practice came to nothing. A fallen sannysi is like that.
2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
As the reader will recall: in the legend of the temptation under
the Bo Tree (supra, pp. 31-32) the antagonist of the Future
2.06 - The Wand, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
24:There is no power which cannot be pressed in to the service of the Magical Will: it is only the temptation to value that power for itself which offends.
25:One does not say: "Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" unless repeated prunings have convinced the gardener that the growth must always be a rank one.
--
107:Under the strain of a magical vow this is too terribly the case. No normal human being understands or can understand the temptations of the saints.
108:An ordinary person with ideas like those which obsessed St. Patrick and St. Antony would be only fit for an asylum.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations.
The most lamentable example of this was the corruption of Pascal, who
--
idiosyncrasy,--repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of
the devil, the presence of God); an imaginary teleology (the Kingdom
--
any mistake at this point, however great may be the temptation thereto
that lies in Christian--I mean to say, ecclesiastical prejudice. Any
--
combats a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! which persuaded itself that
it was possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous body,
2.1.3.4 - Conduct, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As girls and boys are educated together here we have always insisted on the relations between them to be those of simple comradeship without any mixture of sex feeling and sensuality; and to avoid all temptation they are forbidden to go in one anothers room and to meet anywhere privately. This has been made clear to everybody. And if these rules are strictly followed, nothing unpleasant can happen.
16 August 1960
2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
I have repeated the hallowed name of Durga, and shall I not be liberated? How can I be a sinner any more? How can I be bound any more?' If you cannot get rid of temptation, direct it toward God. Be infatuated with God's beauty. If you cannot get rid of pride, then be proud to say that you are the servant of God, you are the child of God. Thus turn the six passions toward God."
DOCTOR: "It is very hard to control the sense-organs. They are like restive horses, whose eyes must be covered with blinkers. In the case of some horses it is necessary to prevent them from seeing at all."
2.22 - Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the contrary, a system of rewards and punishments debases at once the ethical values of good, turns virtue into selfishness, a commercial bargain of self-interest, and replaces the right motive of abstinence from evil by a baser motive. Human beings have erected the rule of reward and punishment as a social necessity in order to restrain the doing of things harmful to the community and encourage what is helpful to it; but to erect this human device into a general law of cosmic Nature or a law of the supreme Being or the supreme law of existence is a procedure of doubtful value. It is human, but also puerile, to impose the insufficient and narrow standards of our own Ignorance on the larger and more intricate operations of cosmic Nature or on the action of the supreme Wisdom and supreme Good which draws or raises us towards itself by a spiritual power working slowly in ourselves through our inner being and not by a law of temptation and compulsion upon our outer vital nature. If the soul is passing through an evolution by a many-sided and complex experience, any law of Karma or return to action and output of Energy, if it is to fit itself into that experience, must also be complex and cannot be of a simple and exiguous texture or rigid and one-sided in its incidence.
At the same time, a partial truth of fact, not of fundamental or general principle, may be admitted for this doctrine; for although the lines of the action of energy are distinct and independent, they can act together and upon each other, though not by any rigidly fixed law of correspondence. It is possible that in the total method of the returns of Nature there intervenes a strand of connection or rather of interaction between vital-physical good and ill and ethical good and ill, a limited correspondence and meeting-point between divergent dualities not amounting to an inseparable coherence. Our own varying energies, desires, movements are mixed together in their working and can bring about a mixed result: our vital part does demand substantial and external rewards for virtue, for knowledge, for every intellectual, aesthetic, moral or physical effort; it believes firmly in punishment for sin and even for ignorance. This may well either create or else reply to a corresponding cosmic action; for Nature takes us as we are and to some extent suits her movements to our need or our demands on her. If we accept the action of invisible Forces upon us, there may be also invisible Forces in Life-Nature that belong to the same plane of Consciousness-Force as this part of our being, Forces that move according to the same plan or the same power-motive as our lower vital nature. It can be often observed that when a self-assertive vital egoism goes on trampling on its way without restraint or scruple all that opposes its will or desire, it raises a mass of reactions against itself, reactions of hatred, antagonism, unease in men which may have their result now or hereafter, and still more formidable adverse reactions in universal Nature. It is as if the patience of Nature, her willingness to be used were exhausted; the very forces that the ego of the strong vital man seized and bent to its purpose rebel and turn against him, those he had trampled on rise up and receive power for his downfall: the insolent vital force of Man strikes against the throne of Necessity and is dashed to pieces or the lame foot of Punishment reaches at last the successful offender. This reaction to his energies may come upon him in another life and not at once, it may be a burden of consequence he takes up in his return to the field of these Forces; it may happen on a small as well as a large scale, to the small vital being and his small errors as well as in these larger instances.
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This, however, imposes a difficult and slow spiritual advance: for, first, the spiritual emergence has to wait at each step for the instruments to be ready; next, as the spiritual formation emerges, it is mixed inextricably with the powers, motives, impulses of an imperfect mind, life and body, - there is a pull on it to accept and serve these powers, motives and impulses, a downward gravitation and perilous mixture, a constant temptation to fall or deviation, at least a fettering, a weight, a retardation; there is a necessity to return upon a step gained in order to bring up something of the nature which hangs back and prevents a farther step; finally, there is, by the very character of mind in which it has to work, a limitation of the emerging spiritual light and power and a compulsion on it to move by segments, to follow one line or another and leave altogether or leave till later on the achievement of its own totality. This hampering, this obstacle of the mind, life and body, - the heavy inertia and persistence of the body, the turbid passions of the life-part, the obscurity and doubting incertitudes, denials, other-formulations of the mind, - is an impediment so great and intolerable that the spiritual urge becomes impatient and tries rigorously to quell these opponents, to reject the life, to mortify the body, to silence the mind and achieve its own separate salvation, spirit departing into pure spirit and rejecting from it altogether an undivine and obscure Nature. Apart from the supreme call, the natural push of the spiritual part in us to return to its own highest element and status, this aspect of vital and physical Nature as an impediment to pure spirituality is a compelling reason for asceticism, for illusionism, for the tendency to other-worldliness, the urge towards withdrawal from life, the passion for a pure and unmixed Absolute. A pure spiritual absolutism is a movement of the self towards its own supreme selfhood, but it is also indispensable for Nature's own purpose; for without it the mixture, the downward gravitation would make the spiritual emergence impossible. The extremist of this absolutism, the solitary, the ascetic, is the standard-bearer of the spirit, his ochre robe is its flag, the sign of a refusal of all compromise, - as indeed the struggle of emergence cannot end by a compromise, but only by an entire spiritual victory and the complete surrender of the lower nature. If that is impossible here, then indeed it must be achieved elsewhere; if Nature refuses submission to the emerging spirit, then the soul must withdraw from her. There is thus a dual tendency in the spiritual emergence, on one side a drive towards the establishment at all cost of the spiritual consciousness in the being, even to the rejection of Nature, on the other side a push towards the extension of spirituality to our parts of nature. But until the first is fully achieved, the second can only be imperfect and halting.
It is the foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the first object in the evolution of the spiritual man, and it is this and the urge of that consciousness towards contact with the Reality, the Self or the Divine Being that must be the first and foremost or even, till it is perfectly accomplished, the sole preoccupation of the spiritual seeker. It is the one thing needful that has to be done by each on whatever line is possible to him, by each according to the spiritual capacity developed in his nature.
2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. There is nothing in this future evolution of the being which could be regarded as irrational or incredible; there is nothing in it abnormal or miraculous: it would be the necessary course of the evolution of consciousness and its forces in the passage from the mental to the gnostic or supramental formulation of our existence. This action of the forces of supernature would be a natural, normal and spontaneously simple working of the new higher or greater consciousness into which the being enters in the course of his self-evolution; the gnostic being accepting the gnostic life would develop and use the powers of this greater consciousness, even as man develops and uses the powers of his mental nature.
56: It is evident that such an increase of the power or powers of consciousness would be not only normal but indispensable to a greater and more perfect life. Human life with its partial harmony, in so far as that is not maintained by the imposition of a settled law and order on the constituent individuals through a partly willing, partly induced, partly forced or unavoidable acceptance, reposes on the agreement of the enlightened or interested elements in their mind, heart, life-sense, an assent to a composite body of common ideas, desires, vital satisfactions, aims of existence. But there is in the mass of constituting individuals an imperfect understanding and knowledge of the ideas, life-aims, life-motives which they have accepted, an imperfect power in their execution, an imperfect will to maintain them always unimpaired, to carry them out fully or to bring the life to a greater perfection: there is an element of struggle and discord, a mass of repressed or unfulfilled desires and frustrated wills, a simmering suppressed unsatisfaction or an awakened or eruptive discontent of unequally satisfied interests; there are new ideas, life-motives that break in and cannot be correlated without upheaval and disturbance; there are life-forces at work in human beings and their environment that are at variance with the harmony that has been constructed, and there is not the full power to overcome the discord and dislocations created by a clashing diversity of mind and life and by the attack of disrupting forces in universal Nature. What is lacking is a spiritual knowledge and spiritual power, a power over self, a power born of inner unification with others, a power over the surrounding or invading world-forces, a full-visioned and fully equipped power of effectuation of knowledge; it is these capacities missing or defective in us that belong to the very substance of gnostic being, for they are inherent in the light and dynamis of the gnostic nature.
2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thy soul's need of divine light and the spirit's perfection can alone bear thee across the darkness of the many nights through which thou must pass, beyond the open or hidden pitfalls of the road, past the dangers of the precipice and the morass, through the battle with giant forces and the clutching of hands that mislead and the delusions of the night and the twilight, through false light and illusive glamour, triumphant over the blows and ordeals and nets and temptations of the gods and on and up to the immeasurable summits[.]
2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The dream was again one of these experiences of test or ordeal on the vital plane which you have been having - here it was the test of temptation by power, comfort, riches, attractive things, as it was formerly the test by fear, difficulty, trouble. The evidence of all these tests is that your inner being is perfectly ready and free to go unwaveringly to the goal. There is nothing there that is wrong or defective.
Keep the reliance steady in your heart and do not allow selfdistrust, depression or sadness to invade you from outside.
2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All attachment and ego must disappear. No temptation of power, for power is given only to do the Divines work and the power itself is the Divines. No attachment to work, for the work is not the egos, but the Divines. No attachment or insistence on the fruits, for that too belongs to the Divine and will come when mind and circumstances are ready. It is the same with sadhana. Only one thing is to be the aim, to be in union and contact with the Divine through love and surrender,the rest will come out of that, whatever is needed for the manifestation.
***
2.3.2 - Desire, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There was and is the opening before you of a new stage in your spiritual development. For it to realise itself you must progress first in two directions. The first we have already pressed on you the surmounting of these vital temptations and desires which linked you to the lower movements and invited the pressure of a hostile Force on your lower vital and your body and the complete surrender of life and body to the One alone. The other is the descent of a full calm and strength and equanimity into these parts so that you may conquer life and its difficulties and do your work for the Divine. This calm and strength had often descended into your mind and higher vital, but these other parts were still open to much weakness and attachment and a self-indulgent movement. That must go if one wants to become a hero and master of spiritual action. In your life at Bogra these things were too much sheltered and allowed to remain; at Shillong you have a chance to be by yourself with the Divine Force and look life in the face from the souls inner strength and become master of circumstances. Outer difficulties or inconveniences you should not allow to alarm or depress you. Inner difficulties should also be met with detachment, calm equality, the unshakable will to conquer.
For the rest, you have rightly said, I must preserve my equanimity and have faith in Divine Guidance when falsehoodor any trouble or difficultyconfronts me. The defect that opened the way to the bodily and other troubles was the faltering in your resolution to conquer the vital and follow the straight and high path and the consequent violent despair and depression it brought in its wake. Let those disappear altogether and do not allow them to rise in that way again. The path of spiritual calm and strength and the consecration of all your forces to the Divine is the one safe way for you and that you must now consistently follow.
27.05 - In Her Company, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine in a physical human body upon earth - it is such a temptation for the disembodied beings in the other worlds; it was so great an opportunity to be near the physical aura of the Divine. It was indeed a privilege, the privilege of having a material body, the privilege possessed by human beings alone to come in touch with the divine material body! So these beings rushed down and tried to be as much near as possible to the earth, to bask in the delightful golden sunshine of the physical presence of the Divine upon earth.
Also it is said, when the Mother used to play on the organ, the same thing happened; there was a crowd of invisible listeners around Her; not only so, the Mother Herself revealed the secret, some beings, even departed musicians, also prayed to Her to be allowed to play on the organ through Her fingers - making the Divine their instrument instead of their being the Divine's instruments!
3.02 - Aridity in Prayer, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
18.: Souls who by God's mercy are brought so far (which, as I said, is no small mercy, for they are likely to ascend still higher) will be greatly benefited by practising prompt obedience. Even if they are not in the religious state, it would be well if they, like certain other people, were to take a director,18' so as never to follow their own will, which is the cause of most of our ills. They should not choose one of their own turn of mind19' (as the saying goes), who is over prudent in his actions, but should select one thoroughly detached from worldly things; it is very helpful to consult a person who has learnt and can teach this. It is encouraging to see that trials which seemed to us impossible to submit to are possible to others, and that they bear them sweetly. Their flight makes us try to soar, like nestlings taught by the elder birds, who, though they cannot fly far at first, little by little imitate their parents: I know the great benefit of this. However determined such persons may be not to offend our Lord, they must not expose themselves to temptation: they are still near the first mansions to which they might easily return. Their strength is not yet established on a solid foundation like that of souls exercised in sufferings, who know how little cause there is to fear the tempests of this world and care nothing for its pleasures: beginners might succumb before any severe trial. Some great persecution, such as the devil knows how to raise to injure us, might make beginners turn back; while zealously trying to withdraw others from sin they might succumb to the attacks made upon them.
19.: Let us look at our own faults, and not at other persons'. People who are extremely correct themselves are often shocked at everything they see20 ; however, we might often learn a great deal that is essential from the very persons whom we censure. Our exterior comportment and manners may be better-this is well enough, but not of the first importance. We ought not to insist on every one following in our footsteps, nor to take upon ourselves to give instructions in spirituality when, perhaps, we do not even know what it is. Zeal for the good of souls, though given us by God, may often lead us astray, sisters; it is best to keep our rule, which bids us ever to live in silence and in hope.21' Our Lord will care for the souls belonging to Him; and if we beg His Majesty to do so, by His grace we shall be able to aid them greatly. May He be for ever blessed!
3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
that leaves nothing unaltered and ceaselessly creates a past that can never be retrieved. He knows that there is nothing purely good in the realm of human experience, but also that for many people it is better to be convinced of an absolute good and to listen to the voice of those who espouse the superiority of consciousness and unambiguous thinking. He may solace himself with the thought that one who can join the shadow to the light is the possessor of the greater riches. But he will not fall into the temptation of playing the law-giver, nor will he pretend to be a prophet of the truth: for he knows that the sick, suffering, or helpless patient standing before him is not the public but is Mr or Mrs X, and that the doctor has to put something tangible and helpful on the table or he is no doctor. His duty is always to the individual, and he is persuaded that nothing has happened if this individual has not been helped. He is answerable to the individual in the first place and to society only in the second. If he therefore prefers individual treatment to collective ameliorations, this accords with the experience that social and collective influences usually produce only a mass intoxication, and that only mans action upon man can bring about a real transformation.59
[126] It cannot have escaped the alchemists that their Sol had something to do with man. Thus Dorn says: From the beginning man was sulphur. Sulphur is a destructive fire enkindled by the invisible sun, and this sun is the Sol Philosophorum,60 which is the much sought-after and highly praised philosophic gold, indeed the goal of the whole work.61 In spite of the fact that Dorn regards the sun and its sulphur as a kind of physiological component of the human body, it is clear that we are dealing with a piece of physiological mythology, i.e., a projection.
3.02 - The Psychology of Rebirth, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
the temptation to be what one seems to be is great, because the
persona is usually rewarded in cash.
3.04 - On Thought - III, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With this fact in mind, let us first of all draw a practical conclusion: let us be lenient towards all, for temptation is strong and human ignorance is great indeed.
But just as we must be compassionate and kind to others, we must be exacting and strict with ourselves, since we want to become lights in the darkness, torches in the night.
--
We must, little by little, day by day, fill our minds with the loftiest, purest, most disinterested thoughts we can conceive of, and through our deliberate care they must become sufficiently living that they awaken in us each time a temptation to think wrongly comes to us from outside and rise in their dazzling splendour to face the shadow which constantly lurks in wait ready to assail us.
Let us light within ourselves the fire of the ancient vestals, the fire symbolising divine intelligence, which it is our duty to manifest.
3.05 - The Formula of I.A.O., #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
and overcome the temptation to return to her for refuge. Kundry,
Armida, Jocasta, Circe, etc., are symbols of this force which tempts
3.09 - The Return of the Soul, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
seeing that it must suffer the damage of temptation in the body and womb,
and you may thus lose the birth. For the delicate Tincture, this tender child
--
suffer and endure temptation and overcome it; it must needs descend into
the Divine Darkness, into the darkness of Saturn, wherein no light of life is
--
and in silence, until its forty days of temptation are over, until the days of
its tribulations are completed, when the seed of life shall waken to life,
--
the fire be let loose in its sight, and all manner of temptations assail it!
[513]
--
sore temptation, and win the victory: then you will see the beginning of its
resurrection from hell, death, and the mortal grave, appearing first in the
3.1.01 - The Problem of Suffering and Evil, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
- of the Power, Light, Peace, Bliss was very evidently one. If it is asked why even if possible it should have been accepted, the answer nearest to the Cosmic Truth which the human intelligence can make is that in the relations or in the transition of the Divine in the Oneness to the Divine in the Many, this ominous possible became at a certain point an inevitable. For once it appears it acquires for the Soul descending into evolutionary manifestation an irresistible attraction which creates the inevitability - an attraction which in human terms on the terrestrial level might be interpreted as the call of the unknown, the joy of danger and difficulty and adventure, the will to attempt the impossible, to work out the incalculable, the will to create the new and uncreated with one's own self and life as the material, the fascination of contradictories and their difficult harmonisation - these things translated into another supraphysical, superhuman consciousness, higher and wider than the mental, were the temptation that
258
3.11 - Epilogue, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
denominator. I have resisted this temptation so far as possible and allow
myself to hope that the reader will not run away with the idea that the
3.1.1 - The Transformation of the Physical, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
After receiving your account of your present condition which I understand perfectly well, my advice to you remains the same, to stick on and still stick on persistently until the dawn comes, which it surely will if you resist the temptation to run away into some outer darkness which it would have much more difficulty in reaching. The details you give do not at all convince me that X was right in thinking that your sadhana was not at all in the line of my Yoga or that you are right in concluding that you are not meant for this line. On the contrary, these are things which come almost inevitably in one degree or another at a certain critical stage through which almost everyone has to pass and which usually lasts for an uncomfortably long time but which need not be at all conclusive or definitive. Usually, if one persists, it is the period of darkest night before the dawn which comes to every or almost every spiritual aspirant. It is due to a plunge one has to take into the sheer physical consciousness unsupported by any true mental light or by any vital joy in life, for these usually withdraw behind the veil, though they are not, as they seem to be, permanently lost. It is a period when doubt, denial, dryness, greyness and all kindred things come up with a great force and often reign completely for a time. It is after this stage has been successfully crossed that the true light begins to come, the light which is not of the mind but of the spirit. The spiritual light no doubt comes to some to a certain extent, and to a few to a considerable extent, in the earlier stages, though that is not the case with all for some have to wait till they can clear out the obstructing stuff in the mind, vital and physical consciousness, and until then they get only a touch now and then. But even at the best this earlier spiritual light is never complete until the darkness of the physical consciousness has been faced and overcome. It is not by ones own fault that one falls into this state, it can come when one is trying ones best to advance. It does not really indicate any radical disability in the nature but certainly it is a hard ordeal and one has to stick very firmly to pass through it. It is difficult to explain these things because the psychological necessity is difficult for the ordinary human reason to understand or to accept. I will try to have a shot at it, but it may take some days.1 Meanwhile, as you have asked what is my advice I send you this brief answer.
***
3.2.1 - Food, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is a fact that by fasting, if the mind and the nerves are solid or the will force dynamic, one can get for a time into a state of inner energy and receptivity which is alluring to the mind and the usual reactions of hunger, weakness, intestinal disturbance, etc. can be wholly avoided. But the body suffers by diminution and there can easily develop in the vital a morbid overstrained condition due to the inrush of more vital energy than the nervous system can assimilate or coordinate. Nervous people should avoid the temptation to fast; it is often accompanied or followed by delusions and a loss of balance. Especially if there is a motive of hunger-strike or that element comes in, as it did in your case, fasting becomes perilous, for it is then an indulgence of a vital movement which may easily become a habit injurious and pernicious to the sadhana. Even if all these reactions are avoided, still there is no sufficient utility in fasting, since the higher energy and receptivity ought to come not by artificial or physical means but by intensity of the consciousness and strong will for the sadhana.
***
3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The hldik akti is the Shakti of the Divine Ananda and Love taking possession of the whole being down to the vital and physical. But it is the Ananda and love of the Divine the spiritual, it cannot be turned to a human love and vital pleasure. It can have nothing to do with marriage. In your dream it was neither the divine nor the human that came, but a supernormal and supraphysical vital kma and joya being from that world intervening in the sleep and trying to take possession of what should be given only to the Divine. That is a particularly dangerous kind of intervention, so I had immediately to put you on your guard against it. It was of the nature of a supraphysical temptation such as the appearance of the Apsaras to the Tapaswis in the stories of the epics and Puranas. The other dreams were dreams of success and fame and were also of the vital plane. You need not be depressed by these ordeals in the subtle worlds; they come to all in one form or another; only you have to learn vigilance and find your way through these lesser planes to the highest, so that it may be the highest that will come down into you. When these trials come, it is a sign that you are advancing, for otherwise the Powers of these worlds, whether lesser gods or Daityas, would not take the trouble to test you.
***
3.3.01 - The Superman, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But God is complex, not simple; and the temptation of the human intellect is to make a short cut to the divine nature by the exclusive worship of one of its principles. Knowledge, Love whose secret word is Delight, Power and Unity are some of the
Names of God. But though they are all divine, yet to follow any of them exclusively is to invite, after the first energy is over,
33.03 - Muraripukur - I, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
About this time, I had been several times to my home town of Rungpore. There at the local Library, I discovered a fine book on the history of Secret Societies. The book gave the story of how subject nations aspiring for freedom began their work in secret. In it the story of Ireland and Russia had been given a good deal of space. The secret societies in Russia had a system which was rather distinctive. It should have been taken over by us, so I have heard Sri Aurobindo say. They would divide the underground workers into little groups of not more than five. No group could know the others, only those belonging to a particular group would know its own members. Each group had a leader, who alone would know his immediate superior placed in charge of only four or five of such little groups. Similarly, the leader of the higher group would have dealings with the one next higher in rank who would be in charge of the bigger groups, and so on, right to the topmost man. Such a system was necessary, for in case someone got caught, that could not implicate the entire organisation but only a handful of his acquaintances. One of the main instruments in the hands of the police or the government for detecting a conspiracy is the confession extracted from the persons caught, whether by torture, through temptations, from sheer bravado, or by whatever other means. Under that system, no one could know anybody except the few members of his own group with whom he came into immediate contact through his work, nor could he know anything about the general plan of work; he had to carry out only the part assigned to him.
At the Rungpore Library I came across another book, namely, Gibbon's famous Decline and Fall of the Roman
33.10 - Pondicherry I, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In addition to force and fraud, the British Government did not hesitate to make use of temptation as well. They sent word to Sri Aurobindo which they followed up by messenger, to say that if he were to return to British India, they would not mind. They would indeed be happy to provide him with a nice bungalow in the quiet surroundings of a hill station, Darjeeling, where he could live in complete freedom and devote himself to his spiritual practices without let or hindrance. Needless to add, this was an ointment spread out to catch a fly and Sri Aurobindo refused the invitation with a "No, thank you."
Afterwards came a more serious attack, perhaps the one most fraught with danger. The First World War was on. India had been seething with discontent and things were not going too well abroad on the European front. The British Government now brought pressure on the French: they must do something drastic about their political refugees. Either they should hand them over to the British, or else let them be deported out of India. The French Government accordingly proposed that they would find room for us in Algeria. There we could live in peace; they would see to our passage so that we need have no worry on that score. H on the other hand we were to refuse this offer, there might be danger: the British authorities might be allowed to seize us forcibly.
33.16 - Soviet Gymnasts, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
"No, sir," I replied. "For one thing, we never ask, much less forceanyone to come here, we offer no ,rewards or temptations. On the contrary, we make it quite clear that the Path chosen here, the training and the education are indeed hard. Sharp as the razor's edge, our sages have called it. So, one should choose carefully. And out of those who still insist on joining us, only a feware permitted. Of course the children know little or nothing, but the parents who bring them here do. At least they have been told. It is, .however, true that there are some children who are conscious and know fairly well what they are doing and why they are here. After staying here and seeing things forthemselves many of them make up their minds to stay on, they refuse to go else where. Also, ours is not a mediaeval monastery, a life-long entombment, so that once you get in you can never get out. Here anyone can leave any time. One has full freedom in the matter. In other words, the very first principle of foundation of our life and teaching in the Ashram is freedom and individuality. No one is cajoled or persuaded to follow the spiritual aim or spiritual path. If one wants to know any thing, one knows it freely, of oneself; if one wants to under stand anything, one does it in freedom. Every moment you are free, you can step in any direction you like, provided you are prepared for the consequence. In fact, we have few or no compulsory codes or taboos here, except such as are absolutely necessary to keep group-life together for any length of time. 'Discover your own rule or law of being for yourself,' that is our primary instruction. Where is compulsion in all this? As for the atmosphere, the 'climate of opinion', wherever men live, in whatever age, society or. country - even in your Soviet state - one has to 'belong'. The common man, or citizen, cannot help breathing in the atmosphere of his age or milieu. But here, and only here, we warn everyone, we tell them, well ahead, to be conscious of all that's happening around and within, we tell them to watch, understand and scrutinise what it is that they are taking in. This is not indoctrination but its exact opposite.
"In all this where does spiritual discipline come in? What is at all its necessity? First and foremost comes the care of the body, then only other considerations. That is what one may naturally think. But it is wrong to think that for spirituality outward comfort and affluence are a sine qua non.Those who want bodily comfort are apt to remain content with that, all their efforts are confined to finding the means of such enjoyment or euphoria. But the spiritual seeker even in the midst of suffering and discomfort will move towards the spirit. In fact, he uses his very adversity for spiritual ends. The true seeker longs for the spirit in the midst of comfort and discomfort alike, while those who do not want the higher life, do not want that, quite apart from being comfortable or otherwise. In spite of what many think, material factors do not determine these things. The Mother once said something to this effect. In order to relieve the disciples from all thoughts of earning their livelihood she had planned an external order of untroubled living, so that the aspirants might find the time and the opportunity to dedicate themselves completely to spiritual living and realisation. In practice she, however, found that this does not always work."
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
This publication is of course indispensable. But by itself it would certainly be too little. To paraphrase Harry Emerson Fosdick46 p. 99, a unified scientist's business is not merely to discuss moral orientation of the sciences, but to persuade scientists to orient themselves morally; not merely to debate the meaning and possibility of Unified Science, but to produce this moral synthesis in the lives of his listeners; not merely to talk about the available moral force of Unified Science to bring victory over academic disintegration and ecotechnical temptation, but to send people out from his classes and conferences with victory in their possession. A unified scientist's task is to create in his associates, fellow scientists and students the thing he is talking about. (End of paraphasis.)
One logical place to practice this is, of course, our Riverside Church where Dr. Fosdick preached. In December, 1971, I wrote its present Preaching Minister the following New Year's letter:
36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
Rigveda 111.62.10. It is clearly stated in the Upanishad: "Savitre satyaprasavaya (the Sun is the origin of truth). Further, the sun of knowledge and the light of knowledge are not expressions unfamiliar to us. We always make use of such comparisons and allegories. If ever the Vedic sages made use of such a comparison, then has it to be regarded as something describing mere natural phenomena? Finally we cannot resist the temptation of quoting another instance. This will serve as a typical example as to what extent quite a simple idea can be twisted. And it will enable us to appreciate what a terrible injustice the Veda has to suffer at the hands of the commentators. The phrase amrtasya vani that is found in the Veda should convey to all the essence of the Veda. But do you know what meaning Sayana has ascribed to it? He has translated amrtasya vani (the message of immortality) as the current of water. Can we be at one with him? In fact, what we want to say is that the Veda is the expression of Yogic realisations, spiritual experiences, the knowledge of the ultimate Truth; It is thus that we can discover the fundamental concept and the esoteric mystery of the Veda. If we follow this course we shall find how easily and consistently the meaning of the whole Veda unfolds itself and becomes crystal-clear. No doubt, at places if we want to delve into the minutest detail, there will be occasions for uncertainty and confusion. But it will not prove an obstacle to the apprehension of the fundamental truths of the Veda provided we can rightly focus the attention of our intelligence on it. Can we not have any access to the Mahabharata because of Vyasakutas[^73]
When the sage Vyasa made a request to Ganesh to record his version of the Mahabharata, the latter agreed to do so on condition that he must not be made to stop his writing. The sage agreed provided Ganesh would not only write but understand his words. It is said that in order to gain time for composition the sage would use some knotty expressions so that Ganesh might take time to understand them. (the knotty expressions devised by Vyasa)? Besides, if we admit the esoteric basis of the Veda, we will get a reasonable clue to the fact as to why the Veda is held in such high esteem in the culture and education of the Hindus.
4.01 - Sweetness in Prayer, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
1.: Graces received in this mansion. 2. Mystic favours. 3. temptations bring humility and merit. 4. Sensible devotion and natural joys. 5. Sweetness in devotion. 6. St. Teresa's experience of it. 7. Love of God, and how to foster it. 8. Distractions. 9. They do not destroy divine union. 10. St. Teresa's physical distractions. 11. How to treat distractions. 12. They should be disregarded. 13. Self-knowledge necessary.
1.: Now that I commence writing about the fourth mansions, it is requisite, as I said,1' to commend myself to the Holy Ghost and to beg Him henceforth to speak for me, that I may be enabled to treat these matters intelligibly. Henceforth they begin to be supernatural and it will be most difficult to speak clearly about them,2' unless His Majesty undertakes it for me, as He did when I explained the subject (as far as I understood it) somewhat about fourteen years ago.3' I believe I now possess more light about the favours God grants some souls, but that is different from being able to elucidate them.4' May His Majesty enable me to do so if it would be useful, but not otherwise.
--
13.: These troubles annoy us more or less according to the state of our health or in different circumstances. The poor soul suffers; although not now to blame, it has sinned at other times, and must be patient. We are so ignorant that what we have read and been told has not sufficed to teach us to disregard wandering thoughts, therefore I shall not be wasting time in instructing and consoling you about these trials. However, this will help you but little until God chooses to enlighten you, and additional measures are needed: His Majesty wishes us to learn by ordinary means to understand ourselves and to recognize the share taken in these troubles by our wandering imagination, our nature, and the devil's temptations, instead of laying all the blame on our souls.
4.01 - The Presence of God in the World, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
therefore, lest I succumb to the temptation t curse
the universe, and the Maker of the universe, teach
4.02 - Autobiographical Evidence, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
may not succumb to the temptation that lies in wait for
every act of boldness, nor ever forget that you alone must
4.03 - CONVERSATION WITH THE KINGS, #Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
with no small temptation to mock their eagerness: for
obviously they were very peaceful kings with old and
4.03 - Prayer of Quiet, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
10.: I realize the danger of such a case, having had the grief of witnessing the fall of persons I knew through their withdrawal from Him Who sought, with so much love, to make Himself their friend, as He proved by His treatment of them. I urgently warn such persons not to run the risk of sinning, for the devil would rather gain one of these souls than many to whom our Lord does not grant such graces,41' as the former may cause him severe loss by leading others to follow their example, and may even render great service to the Church of God. Were there no other reason except that he saw the special love His Majesty bears these people, it would suffice to make Satan frantic to destroy God's work in them, so that they might be lost eternally. Therefore they suffer grievous temptations, and if they fall, they fall lower than others.
11.: You, my sisters, are free from such dangers, as far as we can tell: God keep you from pride and vainglory! The devil sometimes offers counterfeits of the graces I have mentioned: this can easily be detected-the effects being exactly contrary to those of the genuine ones.42' Although I have spoken of it elsewhere,43' I wish to warn you here of a special danger to which those who practise prayer are subject, particularly women, whose weakness of constitution makes them more liable to such mistakes. On account of their penances, prayers, and vigils, or even merely because of debility of health, some persons cannot receive spiritual consolation without being overcome by it. On feeling any interior joy, their bodies being languid and weak, they fall into a slumber-they call it spiritual sleep-which is a more advanced stage of what I have described; they think the soul shares in it as well as the body, and abandon themselves to a sort of intoxication. The more they lose self-control, the more do their feelings get possession of them, because the frame becomes more feeble. They fancy this is a trance and call it one, but I call it nonsense; it does nothing but waste their time and injure their health.
4.04 - In the Total Christ, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
What has become of the temptations aroused by
a world too vast in its horizons, too seductive in its
--
that I may not succumb to the temptation that lies
in wait for every act of boldness, nor ever forget
4.2.1 - The Right Attitude towards Difficulties, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All these things are common to every path of Yoga; they are the normal difficulties, fluctuations and struggles which come across the path of spiritual effort. But in this Yoga there is an order or succession of the workings of the secret Force which may vary greatly in its circumstances in each sadhak, but still maintains its general line. Our evolution has brought the being up out of inconscient Matter into the Ignorance of mind, life and body tempered by an imperfect knowledge and is trying to lead us into the light of the Spirit, to lift us into that light and to bring the light down into us, into body and life as well as mind and heart and to fill with it all that we are. This and its consequences, of which the greatest is the union with the Divine and life in the divine consciousness, is the meaning of the integral transformation. Mind is our present topmost faculty; it is through the thinking mind and the heart with the soul, the psychic being behind them that we have to grow into the Spirit, for what the Force first tries to bring about is to fix the mind in the right central idea, faith or mental attitude and the right aspiration and poise of the heart and to make these sufficiently strong and firm to last in spite of other things in the mind and heart which are other than or in conflict with them. Along with this it brings whatever experiences, realisations or descent or growth of knowledge the mind of the individual is ready for at the time or as much of it, however small, as is necessary for its further progress: sometimes these realisations and experiences are very great and abundant, sometimes few and small or negligible; in some there seems to be in this first stage nothing much of these things or nothing decisive the Force seems to concentrate on a preparation of the mind only. In many cases the sadhana seems to begin and proceed with experiences in the vital; but in reality this can hardly take place without some mental preparation, even if it is nothing more than a turning of the mind or some kind of opening which makes the vital experiences possible. In any case, to begin with the vital is a hazardous affair; the difficulties there are more numerous and more violent than on the mental plane and the pitfalls are innumerable. The access to the soul, the psychic being, is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in a maze of vital experiences, not always reliable, the temptation of small siddhis, the appeal of the powers of darkness to the ego. One has to struggle through these densities to the psychic being behind and bring it forward; then only can the sadhana on the vital plane be safe.
However that may be, the descent of the sadhana, of the action of the Force into the vital plane of our being becomes after some time necessary. The Force does not make a wholesale change of the mental being and nature, still less an integral transformation before it takes this step: if that could be done, the rest of the sadhana would be comparatively secure and easy. But the vital is there and always pressing on the mind and heart, disturbing and endangering the sadhana and it cannot be left to itself for too long. The ego and desires of the vital, its disturbances and upheavals have to be dealt with and if not at once expelled, at least dominated and prepared for a gradual if not a rapid modification, change, illumination. This can only be done on the vital plane itself by descending to that level. The vital ego itself must become conscious of its own defects and willing to get rid of them; it must decide to throw away its vanities, ambitions, lusts and longings, its rancours and revolts and all the rest of the impure stuff and unclean movements within it. This is the time of the greatest difficulties, revolts and dangers. The vital ego hates being opposed in its desires, resents disappointment, is furious against wounds to its pride and vanity; it does not like the process of purification and it may very well declare Satyagraha against it, refuse to cooperate, justify its own demands and inclinations, offer passive resistance of many kinds, withdraw the vital support which is necessary both to the life and the sadhana and try to withdraw the being from the path of spiritual endeavour. All this has to be faced and overcome, for the temple of the being has to be swept clean if the Lord of our being is to take his place and receive our worship there.
4.2 - Karma, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
302. The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.
303. If a woman has tempted thee, is it her fault or thine? Be not a fool and a self-deceiver.
4.3.2 - Attacks by the Hostile Forces, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The hostiles when they cannot break the Yoga by positive means, by positive temptations or vital outbreaks, are quite willing to do it negatively; first by depression, then by refusal at once of ordinary life and of sadhana.
***
4.3 - Bhakti, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
459. I hated the devil and was sick with his temptations and tortures; and I could not tell why the voice in his departing words was so sweet that when he returned often and offered himself to me, it was with sorrow I refused him. Then I discovered it was Krishna at His tricks and my hate was changed into laughter.
460. They explained the evil in the world by saying that Satan had prevailed against God; but I think more proudly of my
5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[647] The Shulamite remains unchanged, as did the old Adam. And yet Adam Kadmon is born, a non-Christian second Adam, just at the moment when the transformation is expected. This extraordinary contradiction seems insoluble at first sight. But it becomes understandable when we consider that the illumination or solificatio of the Shulamite is not the first transformation but the second, and takes place within. The subject of transformation is not the empirical man, however much he may identify with the old Adam, but Adam the Primordial Man, the archetype within us. The black Shulamite herself represents the first transformation: it is the coming to consciousness of the black anima, the Primordial Mans feminine aspect. The second, or solificatio, is the conscious differentiation of the masculine aspecta far more difficult task. Every man feels identical with this, though in reality he is not. There is too much blackness in the archetype for him to put it all down to his own account, and so many good and positive things that he cannot resist the temptation to identify with them. It is therefore much easier to see the blackness in projected form: The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat holds true even of the most enlightened psychology. But the masculine aspect is as unfathomable as the feminine aspect. It would certainly not be fitting for the empirical man, no matter how swollen his ego-feelings, to appropriate the whole range of Adams heights and depths. Human being though he is, he has no cause to attribute to himself all the nobility and beauty a man can attain to, just as he would assuredly refuse to accept the guilt for the abjectness and baseness that make man lower than an animalunless, of course, he were driven by insanity to act out the role of the archetype.
[648] But although, when the masculine aspect of the Primordial Man comes forth again, it is the old Adam, who is black like the Shulamite, it is nevertheless the second Adam, i.e., the still older Adam before the Fall, Adam Kadmon. The ambiguity of this passage is too perfect for the author, who proves himself elsewhere to be a not particularly skilful forger, to have been conscious of it. The coming to consciousness of Adam Kadmon would indeed be a great illumination, for it would be a realization of the inner man or Anthropos, an archetypal totality transcending the sexes. In so far as this Man is divine, we could speak of a theophany. The Shulamites hope of becoming a white dove points to a future, perfect state. The white dove is a hint that the Shulamite will become Sophia,355 the Holy Ghost, while Adam Kadmon is an obvious parallel of Christ.
5.1.03 - The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
These things [such as temptation by Apsaras] are possible but they do not usually happen - because it is difficult for beings of the subtle worlds to materialise to such an extent or for a long time. They prefer to act by influencing human beings, using them as instruments or taking possession of a human mind and body.
There are two kinds of Asuras - one kind were divine in their origin but have fallen from their divinity by self-will and opposition to the intention of the Divine: they are spoken of in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purposes of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as also the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pisachas and others resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don't change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The
5.2.01 - The Descent of Ahana, #Collected Poems, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Conquers, the grief. We resist; His temptations leap down compelling;
Virtue cheats us with noble names to a lofty rebelling.
--
Yet when we faint it is He that spurs. temptation vexes;
Honied a thousand whispers come, in the birds, in the breezes,
5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Lord's Prayer, where we say "Lead us not into temptation"
for is not this really the business of the tempter, the devil him-
--
themselves into temptation?
254
6.04 - THE MEANING OF THE ALCHEMICAL PROCEDURE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[688] In addition, the plant Mercurialis (dogs mercury) is indicated. Like the Homeric magic herb Moly, it was found by Hermes himself and must therefore have magical effects. It is particularly favourable to the coniunctio because it occurs in male and female form and thus can determine the sex of a child about to be conceived. Mercurius himself was said to be generated from an extract of it that spirit which acts as a mediator (because he is utriusque capax, capable of either) and saviour of the Macrocosm, and is therefore best able to unite the above with the below. In his ithyphallic form as Hermes Kyllenios, he contri butes the attractive power of sexuality, which plays a great role in the coniunctio symbolism.98 Like honey, he is dangerous because of his possibly poisonous effect, for which reason it naturally seemed advisable to our author to add rosemary to the mixture as an alexipharmic (antidote) and a synonym for Mercurius (aqua permanens), perhaps on the principle that like cures like. Dorn could hardly resist the temptation to exploit the alchemical allusion to ros marinus, sea-dew. In agreement with ecclesiastical symbolism there was in alchemy, too, a dew of grace, the aqua vitae, the perpetual, permanent, and two-meaninged
, divine water or sulphur water. The water was also called aqua pontica (sea-water) or simply sea. This was the great sea over which the alchemist sailed in his mystic peregrination, guided by the heart of Mercurius in the heavenly North Pole, to which nature herself points with the magnetic compass.99 It was also the bath of regeneration, the spring rain which brings forth the vegetation, and the aqua doctrinae.
6.09 - Imaginary Visions, #The Interior Castle or The Mansions, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
8. The soul for some time afterwards possesses such certainty that this grace comes from God that whatever people may say to the contrary it cannot fear delusion. Later on, when her confessor suggests doubts to her, God may allow such a person to waver in her belief for a time and to feel misgivings lest, in punishment for her sins, she may possibly have been left to go astray. However, she does not give way to these apprehensions, but (as I said in speaking of other matters)157 they only affect her in the same way as the temptations of the devil against faith, which may disturb the mind but do not shake the firmness of belief. In fact, the more severe the assault,158 the more certain is she that the evil one could never have produced the great benefits she is conscious of having received, because he exercises no such power over the interior of the soul. He may present a false apparition but it does not possess such truth, majesty, and efficacy.
9. As confessors cannot see these effects, which perhaps the person to whom God has shown the vision is unable to explain, they are afraid of deception, as indeed they have good reason to be. Therefore caution is necessary and time should be allowed to see what effects follow. Day by day, the progress of the soul in humility and in the virtues should be watched: if the devil is concerned in the matter, he will soon show signs of himself and will be detected in a thousand lies. If the confessor is experienced and has received such favours himself, he will not take long in discovering the truth. In fact, he will know immediately, on being told of the vision, whether it is divine or comes from the imagination or the demon: more especially if he has received the gift of discerning spirits then, if he is learned, he will understand the matter at once even though he has not personally experienced the like.
6.10 - THE SELF AND THE BOUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[777] If we now recall to what a degree the soul has humanized and realized itself, we can judge how very much it today expresses the body also, with which it is coexistent. Here is a coniunctio of the second degree, such as the alchemists at most dreamed of but could not realize. Thus far the transformation into the psychological is a notable advance, but only if the centre experienced proves to be a spiritus rector of daily life. Obviously, it was clear even to the alchemists that one could have a lapis in ones pocket without ever making gold with it, or the aurum potabile in a bottle without ever having tasted that bittersweet drinkhypo thetically speaking, of course, for they never succumbed to the temptation to use their stone in reality because they never succeeded in making one. The psychological significance of this misfortune should not be overestimated, however. It takes second place in comparison with the fascination which emanated from the sensed and intuited archetype of wholeness. In this respect alchemy fared no worse than Christianity, which in its turn was not fatally disturbed by the continuing non-appearance of the Lord at the Second Coming. The intense emotion that is always associated with the vitality an archetypal idea conveyseven though only a minimum of rational understanding may be presenta premonitory experience of wholeness to which a subsequently differentiated understanding can add nothing essential, at least as regards the totality of the experience. A better developed understanding can, however, constantly renew the vitality of the original experience. In view of the inexhaustibility of the archetype the rational understanding derived from it means relatively little, and it would be an unjustifiable overestimation of reason to assume that, as a result of understanding, the illumination in the final state is a higher one than in the initial state of numinous experience. The same objection, as we have seen, was made to Cardinal Newmans view concerning the development of dogma, but it was overlooked that rational understanding or intellectual formulation adds nothing to the experience of wholeness, and at best only facilitates its repetition. The experience itself is the important thing, not its intellectual representation or clarification, which proves meaningful and helpful only when the road to original experience is blocked. The differentiation of dogma not only expresses its vitality but is needed in order to preserve its vitality. Similarly, the archetype at the basis of alchemy needs interpreting if we are to form any conception of its vitality and numinosity and thereby preserve it at least for our science. The alchemist likewise interpreted his experience as best he could, though without ever understanding it to the degree that psychological explanation makes possible today. But his inadequate understanding did not detract from the totality of his archetypal experience any more than our wider and more differentiated understanding adds anything to it.
[778] With the advance towards the psychological a great change sets in, for self-knowledge has certain ethical consequences which are not just impassively recognized but demand to be carried out in practice. This depends of course on ones moral endowment, on which as we know one should not place too much reliance. The self, in its efforts at self-realization, reaches out beyond the ego-personality on all sides; because of its all-encompassing nature it is brighter and darker than the ego, and accordingly confronts it with problems which it would like to avoid. Either ones moral courage fails, or ones insight, or both, until in the end fate decides. The ego never lacks moral and rational counterarguments, which one cannot and should not set aside so long as it is possible to hold on to them. For you only feel yourself on the right road when the conflicts of duty seem to have resolved themselves, and you have become the victim of a decision made over your head or in defiance of the heart. From this we can see the numinous power of the self, which can hardly be experienced in any other way. For this reason the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego. The extraordinary difficulty in this experience is that the self can be distinguished only conceptually from what has always been referred to as God, but not practically. Both concepts apparently rest on an identical numinous factor which is a condition of reality. The ego enters into the picture only so far as it can offer resistance, defend itself, and in the event of defeat still affirm its existence. The prototype of this situation is Jobs encounter with Yahweh. This hint is intended only to give some indication of the nature of the problems involved. From this general statement one should not draw the overhasty conclusion that in every case there is a hybris of ego-consciousness which fully deserves to be overpowered by the unconscious. That is not so at all, because it very often happens that ego-consciousness and the egos sense of responsibility are too weak and need, if anything, streng thening. But these are questions of practical psycho therapy, and I mention them here only because I have been accused of underestimating the importance of the ego and giving undue prominence to the unconscious. This strange insinuation emanates from a theological quarter. Obviously my critic has failed to realize that the mystical experiences of the saints are no different from other effects of the unconscious.
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
out by any temptation, any other impulsion whatsoever.
Section Six
BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
They lost all they had. Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the hidden man of the heart, which in the sight of God are of great price?[49] Did they lose these? For these are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle[Pg 15] said, "Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."[50]
They, then, who lost their worldly all in the sack of Rome, if they owned their possessions as they had been taught by the apostle, who himself was poor without, but rich within,that is to say, if they used the world as not using it,could say in the words of Job, heavily tried, but not overcome: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord."[51] Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death. But as to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making; in the words of the apostle quoted above, "they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." For it was well that they who had so long despised these verbal admonitions should receive the teaching of experience. For when the apostle says, "They that will be rich fall into temptation," and so on, what he blames in riches is not the possession of them, but the desire of them. For elsewhere he says, "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves[Pg 16] a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life."[52] They who were making such a use of their property have been consoled for light losses by great gains, and have had more pleasure in those possessions which they have securely laid past, by freely giving them away, than grief in those which they entirely lost by an anxious and selfish hoarding of them. For nothing could perish on earth save what they would be ashamed to carry away from earth. Our Lord's injunction runs, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."[53] And they who have listened to this injunction have proved in the time of tribulation how well they were advised in not despising this most trustworthy teacher, and most faithful and mighty guardian of their treasure. For if many were glad that their treasure was stored in places which the enemy chanced not to light upon, how much better founded was the joy of those who, by the counsel of their God, had fled with their treasure to a citadel which no enemy can possibly reach! Thus our Paulinus, bishop of Nola,[54] who voluntarily abandoned vast wealth and became quite poor, though abundantly rich in holiness, when the barbarians sacked Nola, and took him prisoner, used silently to pray, as he afterwards told me, "O Lord, let me not be troubled for gold and silver, for where all my treasure is Thou knowest." For all his treasure was where he had been taught to hide and store it by Him who had also foretold that these calamities would happen in the world. Consequently those persons who obeyed their Lord when He warned them where and how to lay up treasure, did not lose even their earthly possessions in the invasion of the barbarians; while those who are now repenting[Pg 17] that they did not obey Him have learnt the right use of earthly goods, if not by the wisdom which would have prevented their loss, at least by the experience which follows it.
But some good and Christian men have been put to the torture, that they might be forced to deliver up their goods to the enemy. They could indeed neither deliver nor lose that good which made themselves good. If, however, they preferred torture to the surrender of the mammon of iniquity, then I say they were not good men. Rather they should have been reminded that, if they suffered so severely for the sake of money, they should endure all torment, if need be, for Christ's sake; that they might be taught to love Him rather who enriches with eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and not silver and gold, for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether they preserved it by telling a lie, or lost it by telling the truth. For under these tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him, no one preserved wealth save by denying its existence. So that possibly the torture which taught them that they should set their affections on a possession they could not lose, was more useful than those possessions which, without any useful fruit at all, disquieted and tormented their anxious owners. But then we are reminded that some were tortured who had no wealth to surrender, but who were not believed when they said so. These too, however, had perhaps some craving for wealth, and were not willingly poor with a holy resignation; and to such it had to be made plain, that not the actual possession alone, but also the desire of wealth, deserved such excruciating pains. And even if they were destitute of any hidden stores of gold and silver, because they were living in hopes of a better life,I know not indeed if any such person was tortured on the supposition that he had wealth; but if so, then certainly in confessing, when put to the question, a holy poverty, he confessed Christ. And though it was scarcely to be expected that the barbarians should believe him, yet no confessor of a holy poverty could be tortured without receiving a heavenly reward.
--
There remains one reason for suicide which I mentioned before, and which is thought a sound one,namely, to prevent one's falling into sin either through the blandishments of pleasure or the violence of pain. If this reason were a good one, then we should be impelled to exhort men at once to destroy themselves, as soon as they have been washed in the laver of regeneration, and have received the forgiveness of all sin. Then is the time to escape all future sin, when all past sin is blotted out. And if this escape be lawfully secured by suicide, why not then specially? Why does any baptized person hold his hand from taking his own life? Why does any person who is freed from the hazards of this life again expose himself to them, when he has power so easily to rid himself of them all, and when it is written, "He who loveth danger shall fall into it?"[76] Why does he love, or at least face, so many serious dangers, by remaining in this life from which he may legitimately depart? But is any one so blinded and twisted in his moral nature, and so far astray from the truth,[Pg 39] as to think that, though a man ought to make away with himself for fear of being led into sin by the oppression of one man, his master, he ought yet to live, and so expose himself to the hourly temptations of this world, both to all those evils which the oppression of one master involves, and to numberless other miseries in which this life inevitably implicates us? What reason, then, is there for our consuming time in those exhortations by which we seek to animate the baptized, either to virginal chastity, or vidual continence, or matrimonial fidelity, when we have so much more simple and compendious a method of deliverance from sin, by persuading those who are fresh from baptism to put an end to their lives, and so pass to their Lord pure and well-conditioned? If any one thinks that such persuasion should be attempted, I say not he is foolish, but mad. With what face, then, can he say to any man, "Kill yourself, lest to your small sins you add a heinous sin, while you live under an unchaste master, whose conduct is that of a barbarian?" How can he say this, if he cannot without wickedness say, "Kill yourself, now that you are washed from all your sins, lest you fall again into similar or even aggravated sins, while you live in a world which has such power to allure by its unclean pleasures, to torment by its horrible cruelties, to overcome by its errors and terrors?" It is wicked to say this; it is therefore wicked to kill oneself. For if there could be any just cause of suicide, this were so. And since not even this is so, there is none.
28. By what judgment of God the enemy was permitted to indulge his lust on the bodies of continent Christians.
BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
former case he became the "Dragon-Slayer," as having happily overcome all the temptations; and a
"Son of the Serpent" and a Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a new body,
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
into temptation," and is addressed by man to the terrible Spirit of duality in man himself. For (Ahura)
Mazda is the spiritual, divine, and purified man, and Armaita Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or
--
course, allegorizing the divine and steady will of the Yogi -- determined to resist all such temptations,
and thus destroy the passions within his earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
evil and cruel deeds. "Lead us not into temptation" is addressed daily to "our Father, which art in
Heaven," and not to the Devil, by millions of human Christian hearts. They do so, repeating the very
--
"especially in his policy of deception, temptation, and cunning."
In the Vishnu Purana this is made as plain as can be. For it is said there, that "at the conclusion of their
BOOK IX. - Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
The devils themselves knew this manifestation of God so well, that they said to the Lord, though clothed with the[Pg 377] infirmity of flesh, "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us before the time?"[355] From these words, it is clear that they had great knowledge, and no charity. They feared His power to punish, and did not love His righteousness. He made known to them so much as He pleased, and He was pleased to make known so much as was needful. But He made Himself known, not as to the holy angels, who know Him as the Word of God, and rejoice in His eternity, which they partake, but as was requisite to strike with terror the beings from whose tyranny He was going to free those who were predestined to His kingdom and the glory of it, eternally true and truly eternal. He made Himself known, therefore, to the demons, not by that which is life eternal, and the unchangeable light which illumines the pious, whose souls are cleansed by the faith that is in Him, but by some temporal effects of His power, and evidences of His mysterious presence, which were more easily discerned by the angelic senses even of wicked spirits than by human infirmity. But when He judged it advisable gradually to suppress these signs, and to retire into deeper obscurity, the prince of the demons doubted whether He were the Christ, and endeavoured to ascertain this by tempting Him, in so far as He permitted Himself to be tempted, that He might adapt the manhood He wore to be an example for our imitation. But after that temptation, when, as Scripture says, He was ministered to[356] by the angels who are good and holy, and therefore objects of terror to the impure spirits, He revealed more and more distinctly to the demons how great He was, so that, even though the infirmity of His flesh might seem contemptible, none dared to resist His authority.
22. The difference between the knowledge of the holy angels and that of the demons.
Book of Genesis, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The first three chapters of Genesis are the best known of Hebrew Scripture: Chapter One presents God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1:14, God designated appointed times - - moadim - for His creation. Genesis 1:26-27 relates that God decided to make man in our image and likeness. The idea of human dignity, that we are created in the image of God (1:27), supports the theological basis for human equality and the core principle of liberty in Western Christian civilization, as found in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Chapter Two provides further detail on the creation of man and woman. Chapter Three records the temptation and fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. The first line of Genesis is truly one of the most famous lines of Hebrew Scripture:
Genesis 1:1.
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The temptation of Joseph
1 And Joseph was brought down to Egypt; and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hands of the Ishmeelites, which had brought him down thither. 2 And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. 3 And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand. 4 And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand. 5 And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the LORD blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the LORD was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field. 6 And he left all that he had in Joseph's hand; and he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was a goodly person, and well favoured.
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
rounded up, in the last pages of his temptation of Saint
Anthony, a number of medieval and classical monsters and
--
Catoblepas to the ancients. At the close of The temptation
of Saint Anthony, Flaubert describes it and has it speak in
--
last pages of The temptation of Saint Anthony, we read:
The Manticore a gigantic red lion with a human face
--
Among the monstrous creatures of the temptation is the
Nasnas, which has only one eye, one cheek, one hand, one
--
Both Southeys Thalaba () and Flauberts temptation
of Saint Anthony () speak of the Simorg Anka; Flaubert
BOOK V. - Of fate, freewill, and God's prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
What great thing, therefore, is it for that eternal and celestial city to despise all the charms of this world, however pleasant, if for the sake of this terrestrial city Brutus could even put to death his son,a sacrifice which the heavenly city compels no one to make? But certainly it is more difficult to put to death one's sons, than to do what is required to be done for the heavenly country, even to distribute to the poor those[Pg 210] things which were looked upon as things to be amassed and laid up for one's children, or to let them go, if there arise any temptation which compels us to do so, for the sake of faith and righteousness. For it is not earthly riches which make us or our sons happy; for they must either be lost by us in our lifetime, or be possessed when we are dead, by whom we know not, or perhaps by whom we would not. But it is God who makes us happy, who is the true riches of minds. But of Brutus, even the poet who celebrates his praises testifies that it was the occasion of unhappiness to him that he slew his son, for he says,
"And call his own rebellious seed For menaced liberty to bleed. Unhappy father! howsoe'er The deed be judged by after days."[213]
BOOK XI. - Augustine passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.Speculations regarding the creation of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
It is with reference to the nature, then, and not to the wickedness of the devil, that we are to understand these words, "This is the beginning of God's handiwork;"[480] for, without doubt, wickedness can be a flaw or vice[481] only where the nature previously was not vitiated. Vice, too, is so contrary to nature, that it cannot but damage it. And therefore departure from God would be no vice, unless in a nature whose property it was to abide with God. So that even the wicked will is a strong proof of the goodness of the nature. But God, as He is the supremely good Creator of good natures, so is He of evil wills the most just Ruler; so that, while they make an ill use of good natures, He makes a good use even of evil wills. Accordingly, He caused the devil (good by God's creation, wicked by his own will) to be cast down from his high position, and to become the mockery of His angels,that is, He caused his temptations to benefit those whom he wishes to injure by them. And because God, when[Pg 457] He created him, was certainly not ignorant of his future malignity, and foresaw the good which He Himself would bring out of his evil, therefore says the psalm, "This leviathan whom Thou hast made to be a sport therein,"[482] that we may see that, even while God in His goodness created him good, He yet had already foreseen and arranged how He would make use of him when he became wicked.
18. Of the beauty of the universe, which becomes, by God's ordinance, more brilliant by the opposition of contraries.
BOOK XII. - Of the creation of angels and men, and of the origin of evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
If the further question be asked, What was the efficient cause of their evil will? there is none. For what is it which makes the will bad, when it is the will itself which makes the action bad? And consequently the bad will is the cause of the bad action, but nothing is the efficient cause of the bad will. For if anything is the cause, this thing either has or has not a will. If it has, the will is either good or bad. If good, who is so left to himself as to say that a good will[Pg 488] makes a will bad? For in this case a good will would be the cause of sin; a most absurd supposition. On the other hand, if this hypothetical thing has a bad will, I wish to know what made it so; and that we may not go on for ever, I ask at once, what made the first evil will bad? For that is not the first which was itself corrupted by an evil will, but that is the first which was made evil by no other will. For if it were preceded by that which made it evil, that will was first which made the other evil. But if it is replied, "Nothing made it evil; it always was evil," I ask if it has been existing in some nature. For if not, then it did not exist at all; and if it did exist in some nature, then it vitiated and corrupted it, and injured it, and consequently deprived it of good. And therefore the evil will could not exist in an evil nature, but in a nature at once good and mutable, which this vice could injure. For if it did no injury, it was no vice; and consequently the will in which it was, could not be called evil. But if it did injury, it did it by taking away or diminishing good. And therefore there could not be from eternity, as was suggested, an evil will in that thing in which there had been previously a natural good, which the evil will was able to diminish by corrupting it. If, then, it was not from eternity, who, I ask, made it? The only thing that can be suggested in reply is, that something which itself had no will, made the will evil. I ask, then, whether this thing was superior, inferior, or equal to it? If superior, then it is better. How, then, has it no will, and not rather a good will? The same reasoning applies if it was equal; for so long as two things have equally a good will, the one cannot produce in the other an evil will. Then remains the supposition that that which corrupted the will of the angelic nature which first sinned, was itself an inferior thing without a will. But that thing, be it of the lowest and most earthly kind, is certainly itself good, since it is a nature and being, with a form and rank of its own in its own kind and order. How, then, can a good thing be the efficient cause of an evil will? How, I say, can good be the cause of evil? For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evilnot because that is evil to which it turns, but because the[Pg 489] turning itself is wicked. Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it is itself which has become so by wickedly and inordinately desiring an inferior thing. For if two men, alike in physical and moral constitution, see the same corporal beauty, and one of them is excited by the sight to desire an illicit enjoyment, while the other stedfastly maintains a modest restraint of his will, what do we suppose brings it about, that there is an evil will in the one and not in the other? What produces it in the man in whom it exists? Not the bodily beauty, for that was presented equally to the gaze of both, and yet did not produce in both an evil will. Did the flesh of the one cause the desire as he looked? But why did not the flesh of the other? Or was it the disposition? But why not the disposition of both? For we are supposing that both were of a like temperament of body and soul. Must we, then, say that the one was tempted by a secret suggestion of the evil spirit? As if it was not by his own will that he consented to this suggestion and to any inducement whatever! This consent, then, this evil will which he presented to the evil suasive influence,what was the cause of it, we ask? For, not to delay on such a difficulty as this, if both are tempted equally, and one yields and consents to the temptation, while the other remains unmoved by it, what other account can we give of the matter than this, that the one is willing, the other unwilling, to fall away from chastity? And what causes this but their own wills, in cases at least such as we are supposing, where the temperament is identical? The same beauty was equally obvious to the eyes of both; the same secret temptation pressed on both with equal violence. However minutely we examine the case, therefore, we can discern nothing which caused the will of the one to be evil. For if we say that the man himself made his will evil, what was the man himself before his will was evil but a good nature created by God, the unchangeable good? Here are two men who, before the temptation, were alike in body and soul, and of whom one yielded to the tempter who persuaded him, while the other could not be persuaded to desire that lovely body which was equally before the eyes of both. Shall we say of the successfully tempted man that he[Pg 490] corrupted his own will, since he was certainly good before his will became bad? Then, why did he do so? Was it because his will was a nature, or because it was made of nothing? We shall find that the latter is the case. For if a nature is the cause of an evil will, what else can we say than that evil arises from good, or that good is the cause of evil? And how can it come to pass that a nature, good though mutable, should produce any evil that is to say, should make the will itself wicked?
7. That we ought not to expect to find any efficient cause of the evil will.
BOOK XIV. - Of the punishment and results of mans first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But so far as regards this question of mental perturbations, we have answered these philosophers in the ninth book[50] of this work, showing that it is rather a verbal than a real dispute, and that they seek contention rather than truth. Among ourselves, according to the sacred Scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. And because their love is[Pg 16] rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve because they themselves groan within themselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of their body;[51] they rejoice in hope, because there "shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."[52] In like manner they fear to sin, they desire to persevere; they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good works. They fear to sin, because they hear that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."[53] They desire to persevere, because they hear that it is written, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved."[54] They grieve for sin, hearing that "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."[55] They rejoice in good works, because they hear that "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver."[56] In like manner, according as they are strong or weak, they fear or desire to be tempted, grieve or rejoice in temptation. They fear to be tempted, because they hear the injunction, "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."[57] They desire to be tempted, because they hear one of the heroes of the city of God saying, "Examine me, O Lord, and tempt me: try my reins and my heart."[58] They grieve in temptations, because they see Peter weeping;[59] they rejoice in temptations, because they hear James saying, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations."[60]
And not only on their own account do they experience these emotions, but also on account of those whose deliverance they desire and whose perdition they fear, and whose loss or salvation affects them with grief or with joy. For if we who have come into the Church from among the Gentiles may suitably instance that noble and mighty hero who glories in his infirmities, the teacher (doctor) of the nations in faith and truth, who also laboured more than all his fellow-apostles, and instructed the tribes of God's people by his[Pg 17] epistles, which edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be gathered in,that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed by Him, anointed of His Spirit, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict on the theatre of this world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men,[61] and pressing onwards for the prize of his high calling,[62]very joyfully do we with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep;[63] though hampered by fightings without and fears within;[64] desiring to depart and to be with Christ;[65] longing to see the Romans, that he might have some fruit among them as among other Gentiles;[66] being jealous over the Corinthians, and fearing in that jealousy lest their minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ;[67] having great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for the Israelites,[68] because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God;[69] and expressing not only his sorrow, but bitter lamentation over some who had formally sinned and had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications.[70]
BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But not even the saints and faithful worshippers of the one true and most high God are safe from the manifold temptations and deceits of the demons. For in this abode of weakness, and in these wicked days, this state of anxiety has also its use, stimulating us to seek with keener longing for that security where peace is complete and unassailable. There we shall enjoy the gifts of nature, that is to say, all that God the Creator of all natures has bestowed upon ours,gifts not only good, but eternal,not only of the spirit, healed now by wisdom, but also of the body renewed by the resurrection. There the virtues shall no longer be struggling against any vice or evil, but shall enjoy the reward of victory, the eternal peace which no adversary shall disturb. This is the final blessedness, this the ultimate consummation, the unending end. Here, indeed, we are said to be blessed when we have such peace as can be enjoyed in a good life; but such blessedness is mere misery compared to that final felicity. When we mortals possess such peace as this mortal life can afford, virtue, if we are living rightly, makes a right use of the advantages of this peaceful condition; and when we have it not, virtue makes a good use even of the evils a man suffers. But this is true virtue, when it refers all the advantages it makes a good use of, and all that it does in making good use of good and evil things, and itself also, to that end in which we shall enjoy the best and greatest peace possible.
11. Of the happiness of the eternal peace, which constitutes the end or true perfection of the saints.
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But the peace which is peculiar to ourselves we enjoy now[Pg 342] with God by faith, and shall hereafter enjoy eternally with Him by sight. But the peace which we enjoy in this life, whether common to all or peculiar to ourselves, is rather the solace of our misery than the positive enjoyment of felicity. Our very righteousness, too, though true in so far as it has respect to the true good, is yet in this life of such a kind that it consists rather in the remission of sins than in the perfecting of virtues. Witness the prayer of the whole city of God in its pilgrim state, for it cries to God by the mouth of all its members, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."[666] And this prayer is efficacious not for those whose faith is "without works and dead,"[667] but for those whose faith "worketh by love."[668] For as reason, though subjected to God, is yet "pressed down by the corruptible body,"[669] so long as it is in this mortal condition, it has not perfect authority over vice, and therefore this prayer is needed by the righteous. For though it exercises authority, the vices do not submit without a struggle. For however well one maintains the conflict, and however thoroughly he has subdued these enemies, there steals in some evil thing, which, if it do not find ready expression in act, slips out by the lips, or insinuates itself into the thought; and therefore his peace is not full so long as he is at war with his vices. For it is a doubtful conflict he wages with those that resist, and his victory over those that are defeated is not secure, but full of anxiety and effort. Amidst these temptations, therefore, of all which it has been summarily said in the divine oracles, "Is not human life upon earth a temptation?"[670] who but a proud man can presume that he so lives that he has no need to say to God, "Forgive us our debts?" And such a man is not great, but swollen and puffed up with vanity, and is justly resisted by Him who abundantly gives grace to the humble. Whence it is said, "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble."[671] In this, then, consists the righteousness of a man, that he submit himself to God, his body to his soul, and his vices, even when they rebel, to his reason, which either defeats or at least resists them;[Pg 343] and also that he beg from God grace to do his duty,[672] and the pardon of his sins, and that he render to God thanks for all the blessings he receives. But, in that final peace to which all our righteousness has reference, and for the sake of which it is maintained, as our nature shall enjoy a sound immortality and incorruption, and shall have no more vices, and as we shall experience no resistance either from ourselves or from others, it will not be necessary that reason should rule vices which no longer exist, but God shall rule the man, and the soul shall rule the body, with a sweetness and facility suitable to the felicity of a life which is done with bondage. And this condition shall there be eternal, and we shall be assured of its eternity; and thus the peace of this blessedness and the blessedness of this peace shall be the supreme good.
28. The end of the wicked.
BOOK X. - Porphyrys doctrine of redemption, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
It is by true piety that men of God cast out the hostile power of the air which opposes godliness; it is by exorcising it, not by propitiating it; and they overcome all the temptations of the adversary by praying, not to him, but to their own God against him. For the devil cannot conquer or subdue any but those who are in league with sin; and therefore he is conquered in the name of Him who assumed humanity, and that without sin, that Himself being both Priest and Sacrifice, He might bring about the remission of sins, that is to say, might bring it about through the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, by whom we are reconciled to God, the cleansing from sin being accomplished.[Pg 413] For men are separated from God only by sins, from which we are in this life cleansed not by our own virtue, but by the divine compassion; through His indulgence, not through our own power. For, whatever virtue we call our own is itself bestowed upon us by His goodness. And we might attri bute too much to ourselves while in the flesh, unless we lived in the receipt of pardon until we laid it down. This is the reason why there has been vouchsafed to us, through the Mediator, this grace, that we who are polluted by sinful flesh should be cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh. By this grace of God, wherein He has shown His great compassion toward us, we are both governed by faith in this life, and, after this life, are led onwards to the fullest perfection by the vision of immutable truth.
23. Of the principles which, according to the Platonists, regulate the purification of the soul.
BOOK XVIII. - A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church measures her future loftiness by her present humility, and is exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labours, and dangerous temptations, when she soberly rejoices, rejoicing only in hope, there are many reprobate mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in[Pg 282] a drag net;[596] and in this world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed without distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when the wicked must be separated from the good, that in the good, as in His temple, God may be all in all. We acknowledge, indeed, that His word is now fulfilled who spake in the psalm, and said, "I have announced and spoken; they are multiplied above number."[597] This takes place now, since He has spoken, first by the mouth of his forerunner John, and afterward by His own mouth, saying, "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."[598] He chose disciples, whom He also called apostles,[599] of lowly birth, unhonoured, and illiterate, so that whatever great thing they might be or do, He might be and do it in them. He had one among them whose wickedness He could use well in order to accomplish His appointed passion, and furnish His Church an example of bearing with the wicked. Having sown the holy gospel as much as that behoved to be done by His bodily presence, He suffered, died, and rose again, showing by His passion what we ought to suffer for the truth, and by His resurrection what we ought to hope for in adversity; saving always the mystery of the sacrament, by which His blood was shed for the remission of sins. He held converse on the earth forty days with His disciples, and in their sight ascended into heaven, and after ten days sent the promised Holy Spirit. It was given as the chief and most necessary sign of His coming on those who had believed, that every one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus signifying that the unity of the catholic Church would embrace all nations, and would in like manner speak in all tongues.
50. Of the preaching of the gospel, which is made more famous and powerful by the sufferings of its preachers.
BOOK XVI. - The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Among other things, of which it would take too long time to mention the whole, Abraham was tempted about the offering up of his well-beloved son Isaac, to prove his pious obedience, and so make it known to the world, not to God. Now every temptation is not blameworthy; it may even be praiseworthy, because it furnishes probation. And, for the most part, the human mind cannot attain to self-knowledge otherwise than by making trial of its powers through temptation, by some kind of experimental and not merely verbal self-interrogation; when, if it has acknowledged the gift of God, it is pious, and is consolidated by stedfast grace and not puffed up by vain boasting. Of course Abraham could never believe that God delighted in human sacrifices; yet when the divine commandment thundered, it was to be obeyed, not disputed. Yet Abraham is worthy of praise, because he all along believed that his son, on being offered up, would rise again; for God had said to him, when he was unwilling to fulfil his wife's pleasure by casting out the bond maid and her son, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." No doubt He then goes on to say, "And as for the son of this bond woman, I will make him a great nation, because he is thy seed."[303] How then is it said, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called," when God calls Ishmael also his seed? The apostle, in explaining this, says, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called, that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but[Pg 148] the children of the promise are counted for the seed."[304] In order, then, that the children of the promise may be the seed of Abraham, they are called in Isaac, that is, are gathered together in Christ by the call of grace. Therefore the father, holding fast from the first the promise which behoved to be fulfilled through this son whom God had ordered him to slay, did not doubt that he whom he once thought it hopeless he should ever receive would be restored to him when he had offered him up. It is in this way the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews is also to be understood and explained. "By faith," he says, "Abraham overcame, when tempted about Isaac: and he who had received the promise offered up his only son, to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: thinking that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead;" therefore he has added, "from whence also he received him in a similitude."[305] In whose similitude but His of whom the apostle says, "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all?"[306] And on this account Isaac also himself carried to the place of sacrifice the wood on which he was to be offered up, just as the Lord Himself carried His own cross. Finally, since Isaac was not to be slain, after his father was forbidden to smite him, who was that ram by the offering of which that sacrifice was completed with typical blood? For when Abraham saw him, he was caught by the horns in a thicket. What, then, did he represent but Jesus, who, before He was offered up, was crowned with thorns by the Jews?
But let us rather hear the divine words spoken through the angel. For the Scripture says, "And Abraham stretched forth his hand to take the knife, that he might slay his son. And the Angel of the Lord called unto him from heaven, and said, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy beloved son for my sake."[307] It is said, "Now I know," that is, Now I have made to be known; for God was not previously ignorant of this. Then, having offered up that ram[Pg 149] instead of Isaac his son, "Abraham," as we read, "called the name of that place The Lord seeth: as they say this day, In the mount the Lord hath appeared."[308] As it is said, "Now I know," for Now I have made to be known, so here, "The Lord sees," for The Lord hath appeared, that is, made Himself to be seen. "And the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham from heaven the second time, saying, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord; because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy beloved son for my sake; that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess by inheritance the cities of the adversaries: and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice."[309] In this manner is that promise concerning the calling of the nations in the seed of Abraham confirmed even by the oath of God, after that burnt-offering which typified Christ. For He had often promised, but never sworn. And what is the oath of God, the true and faithful, but a confirmation of the promise, and a certain reproof to the unbelieving?
BOOK XXII. - Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Whatever, therefore, has been taken from the body, either during life or after death, shall be restored to it, and, in conjunction with what has remained in the grave, shall rise again, transformed from the oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and clothed in incorruption and immortality. But even though the body has been all quite ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the ruthlessness of enemies, and though it has been so diligently scattered to the winds, or into the water, that there is no[Pg 517] trace of it left, yet it shall not be beyond the omnipotence of the Creator,no, not a hair of its head shall perish. The flesh shall then be spiritual, and subject to the spirit, but still flesh, not spirit, as the spirit itself, when subject to the flesh, was fleshly, but still spirit and not flesh. And of this we have experimental proof in the deformity of our penal condition. For those persons were carnal, not in a fleshly, but in a spiritual way, to whom the apostle said, "I could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal."[1008] And a man is in this life spiritual in such a way, that he is yet carnal with respect to his body, and sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind; but even in his body he will be spiritual when the same flesh shall have had that resurrection of which these words speak, "It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body."[1009] But what this spiritual body shall be, and how great its grace, I fear it were but rash to pronounce, seeing that we have as yet no experience of it. Nevertheless, since it is fit that the joyfulness of our hope should utter itself, and so show forth God's praise, and since it was from the profoundest sentiment of ardent and holy love that the Psalmist cried, "O Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house,"[1010] we may, with God's help, speak of the gifts He lavishes on men, good and bad alike, in this most wretched life, and may do our best to conjecture the great glory of that state which we cannot worthily speak of, because we have not yet experienced it. For I say nothing of the time when God made man upright; I say nothing of the happy life of "the man and his wife" in the fruitful garden, since it was so short that none of their children experienced it: I speak only of this life which we know, and in which we now are, from the temptations of which we cannot escape so long as we are in it, no matter what progress we make, for it is all temptation, and I ask, Who can describe the tokens of God's goodness that are extended to the human race even in this life?
22. Of the miseries and ills to which the human race is justly exposed through the first sin, and from which none can be delivered save by Christ's grace.
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But, irrespective of the miseries which in this life are common to the good and bad, the righteous undergo labours peculiar to themselves, in so far as they make war upon their vices, and are involved in the temptations and perils of such a contest. For though sometimes more violent and at other times slacker, yet without intermission does the flesh lust against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that we cannot do the things we would,[1012] and extirpate all lust, but can only refuse consent to it, as God gives us ability, and so keep it under, vigilantly keeping watch lest a semblance of[Pg 522] truth deceive us, lest a subtle discourse blind us, lest error involve us in darkness, lest we should take good for evil or evil for good, lest fear should hinder us from doing what we ought, or desire precipitate us into doing what we ought not, lest the sun go down upon our wrath, lest hatred provoke us to render evil for evil, lest unseemly or immoderate grief consume us, lest an ungrateful disposition make us slow to recognise benefits received, lest calumnies fret our conscience, lest rash suspicion on our part deceive us regarding a friend, or false suspicion of us on the part of others give us too much uneasiness, lest sin reign in our mortal body to obey its desires, lest our members be used as the instruments of unrighteousness, lest the eye follow lust, lest thirst for revenge carry us away, lest sight or thought dwell too long on some evil thing which gives us pleasure, lest wicked or indecent language be willingly listened to, lest we do what is pleasant but unlawful, and lest in this warfare, filled so abundantly with toil and peril, we either hope to secure victory by our own strength, or attribute it when secured to our own strength, and not to His grace of whom the apostle says, "Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ;"[1013] and in another place he says, "In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."[1014] But yet we are to know this, that however valorously we resist our vices, and however successful we are in overcoming them, yet as long as we are in this body we have always reason to say to God, "Forgive us our debts."[1015] But in that kingdom where we shall dwell for ever, clothed in immortal bodies, we shall no longer have either conflicts or debts,as indeed we should not have had at any time or in any condition, had our nature continued upright as it was created. Consequently even this our conflict, in which we are exposed to peril, and from which we hope to be delivered by a final victory, belongs to the ills of this life, which is proved by the witness of so many grave evils to be a life under condemnation.
24. Of the blessings with which the Creator has filled this life, obnoxious though it be to the curse.
BOOK XXI. - Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various objections urged against it, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Quite exceptional are those who are not punished in this life, but only afterwards. Yet that there have been some who have reached the decrepitude of age without experiencing even the slightest sickness, and who have had uninterrupted enjoyment of life, I know both from report and from my own observation. However, the very life we mortals lead is itself all punishment, for it is all temptation, as the Scriptures declare, where it is written, "Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation?"[880] For ignorance is itself no slight punishment, or want of culture, which it is with justice thought so necessary to escape, that boys are compelled, under pain of severe punishment, to learn trades or letters; and the learning to which they are driven by punishment is itself so much of a punishment to them, that they sometimes prefer the pain that drives them to the pain to which they are driven by it. And who would not shrink from the alternative, and elect to die, if it were proposed to him either to suffer death or to be again an infant? Our infancy, indeed, introducing us to this life not with laughter but with tears, seems unconsciously to predict the ills we are to encounter.[881] Zoroaster alone is said to have laughed when he was born, and that unnatural omen portended no good to him. For he is said to have been the inventor of magical arts, though indeed they were unable to secure to him even the poor felicity of this present life against the assaults of his enemies. For, himself king of the Bactrians, he was conquered by Ninus king of the[Pg 441] Assyrians. In short, the words of Scripture, "An heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb till the day that they return to the mother of all things,"[882]these words so infallibly find fulfilment, that even the little ones, who by the laver of regeneration have been freed from the bond of original sin in which alone they were held, yet suffer many ills, and in some instances are even exposed to the assaults of evil spirits. But let us not for a moment suppose that this suffering is prejudicial to their future happiness, even though it has so increased as to sever soul from body, and to terminate their life in that early age.
15. That everything which the grace of God does in the way of rescuing us from the inveterate evils in which we are sunk, pertains to the future world, in which all things are made new.
Nevertheless, in the "heavy yoke that is laid upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb to the day that they return to the mother of all things," there is found an admirable though painful monitor teaching us to be sober-minded, and convincing us that this life has become penal in consequence of that outrageous wickedness which was perpetrated in Paradise, and that all to which the New Testament invites belongs to that future inheritance which awaits us in the world to come, and is offered for our acceptance, as the earnest that we may, in its own due time, obtain that of which it is the pledge. Now, therefore, let us walk in hope, and let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and so make progress from day to day. For "the Lord knoweth them that are His;"[883] and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God,"[884] but by grace, not by nature. For there is but one Son of God by nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our sakes, that we, by nature sons of men, might by grace become through Him sons of God. For He, abiding unchangeable, took upon Him our nature, that thereby He might take us to Himself; and, holding fast His own divinity, He became partaker of our infirmity, that we, being changed into some better thing, might, by participating in His righteousness and immortality,[Pg 442] lose our own properties of sin and mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted in our nature, perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. For as by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, shall we come to a blessedness inconceivably exalted. Nor ought any one to trust that he has passed from the one man to the other until he shall have reached that place where there is no temptation, and have entered into the peace which he seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in which "the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh."[885] Now, such a war as this would have had no existence, if human nature had, in the exercise of free will, continued stedfast in the uprightness in which it was created. But now in its misery it makes war upon itself, because in its blessedness it would not continue at peace with God; and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognise that a war is to be maintained. For better is it to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them. Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance. We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever subordinated to what is above it. But if (which God forbid) there had been no hope of so blessed a consummation, we should still have preferred to endure the hardness of this conflict, rather than, by our non-resistance, to yield ourselves to the dominion of vice.
16. The laws of grace, which extend to all the epochs of the life of the regenerate.
BOOK XX. - Of the last judgment, and the declarations regarding it in the Old and New Testaments, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
"After that," says John, "he must be loosed a little season." If the binding and shutting up of the devil means his being made unable to seduce the Church, must his loosing be the recovery of this ability? By no means. For the Church predestined and elected before the foundation of the world, the Church of which it is said, "The Lord knoweth them that are His," shall never be seduced by him. And yet there shall be a Church in this world even when the devil shall be loosed, as there has been since the beginning, and shall be always, the places of the dying being filled by new believers. For a little after John says that the devil, being loosed, shall draw the nations whom he has seduced in the whole world to make war against the Church, and that the number of these enemies shall be as the sand of the sea. "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. And the devil who seduced them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."[710] This relates to the last judgment, but I have thought fit to mention it now, lest any one might suppose that in that short time during which the devil shall be loose there shall be no Church upon earth, whether because the devil finds no Church, or destroys it by manifold persecutions. The devil, then, is not bound during the whole time which this book embraces,that is, from the first coming of Christ to the end of the world, when He shall come the second time,not bound in this sense, that during this interval, which goes by the name of a thousand years, he shall not seduce the Church, for not even when loosed shall he seduce it. For certainly if his being bound means that he is not able or not permitted to seduce the Church, what can the loosing of him mean but his being able or permitted to do so? But God forbid that such should be the case! But the binding of the[Pg 361] devil is his being prevented from the exercise of his whole power to seduce men, either by violently forcing or fraudulently deceiving them into taking part with him. If he were during so long a period permitted to assail the weakness of men, very many persons, such as God would not wish to expose to such temptation, would have their faith overthrown, or would be prevented from believing; and that this might not happen, he is bound.
But when the short time comes he shall be loosed. For he shall rage with the whole force of himself and his angels for three years and six months; and those with whom he makes war shall have power to withstand all his violence and stratagems. And if he were never loosed, his malicious power would be less patent, and less proof would be given of the stedfast fortitude of the holy city: it would, in short, be less manifest what good use the Almighty makes of his great evil. For the Almighty does not absolutely seclude the saints from his temptation, but shelters only their inner man, where faith resides, that by outward temptation they may grow in grace. And He binds him that he may not, in the free and eager exercise of his malice, hinder or destroy the faith of those countless weak persons, already believing or yet to believe, from whom the Church must be increased and completed; and he will in the end loose him, that the city of God may see how mighty an adversary it has conquered, to the great glory of its Redeemer, Helper, Deliverer. And what are we in comparison with those believers and saints who shall then exist, seeing that they shall be tested by the loosing of an enemy with whom we make war at the greatest peril even when he is bound? Although it is also certain that even in this intervening period there have been and are some soldiers of Christ so wise and strong, that if they were to be alive in this mortal condition at the time of his loosing, they would both most wisely guard against, and most patiently endure, all his snares and assaults.
Now the devil was thus bound not only when the Church began to be more and more widely extended among the nations beyond Judea, but is now and shall be bound till the end of the world, when he is to be loosed. Because even now men[Pg 362] are, and doubtless to the end of the world shall be, converted to the faith from the unbelief in which he held them. And this strong one is bound in each instance in which he is spoiled of one of his goods; and the abyss in which he is shut up is not at an end when those die who were alive when first he was shut up in it, but these have been succeeded, and shall to the end of the world be succeeded, by others born after them with a like hate of the Christians, and in the depth of whose blind hearts he is continually shut up as in an abyss. But it is a question whether, during these three years and six months when he shall be loose, and raging with all his force, any one who has not previously believed shall attach himself to the faith. For how in that case would the words hold good, "Who entereth into the house of a strong one to spoil his goods, unless first he shall have bound the strong one?" Consequently this verse seems to compel us to believe that during that time, short as it is, no one will be added to the Christian community, but that the devil will make war with those who have previously become Christians, and that, though some of these may be conquered and desert to the devil, these do not belong to the predestinated number of the sons of God: For it is not without reason that John, the same apostle as wrote this Apocalypse, says in his epistle regarding certain persons, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us."[711] But what shall become of the little ones? For it is beyond all belief that in these days there shall not be found some Christian children born, but not yet baptized, and that there shall not also be some born during that very period; and if there be such, we cannot believe that their parents shall not find some way of bringing them to the laver of regeneration. But if this shall be the case, how shall these goods be snatched from the devil when he is loose, since into his house no man enters to spoil his goods unless he has first bound him? On the contrary, we are rather to believe that in these days there shall be no lack either of those who fall away from, or of those who attach themselves to the Church; but there shall be such resoluteness, both in parents to seek[Pg 363] baptism for their little ones, and in those who shall then first believe, that they shall conquer that strong one, even though unbound,that is, shall both vigilantly comprehend, and patiently bear up against him, though employing such wiles and putting forth such force as he never before used; and thus they shall be snatched from him even though unbound. And yet the verse of the Gospel will not be untrue, "Who entereth into the house of the strong one to spoil his goods, unless he shall first have bound the strong one?" For in accordance with this true saying that order is observed the strong one first bound, and then his goods spoiled; for the Church is so increased by the weak and strong from all nations far and near, that by its most robust faith in things divinely predicted and accomplished, it shall be able to spoil the goods of even the unbound devil. For as we must own that, "when iniquity abounds, the love of many waxes cold,"[712] and that those who have not been written in the book of life shall in large numbers yield to the severe and unprecedented persecutions and stratagems of the devil now loosed, so we cannot but think that not only those whom that time shall find sound in the faith, but also some who till then shall be without, shall become firm in the faith they have hitherto rejected, and mighty to conquer the devil even though unbound, God's grace aiding them to understand the Scriptures, in which, among other things, there is foretold that very end which they themselves see to be arriving. And if this shall be so, his binding is to be spoken of as preceding, that there might follow a spoiling of him both bound and loosed; for it is of this it is said, "Who shall enter into the house of the strong one to spoil his goods, unless he shall first have bound the strong one?"
COSA - BOOK I, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
"Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptised?" but as to bodily health, no one says, "Let him be worse wounded, for he is not yet healed." How much better then, had I been at once healed; and then, by my friends' and my own, my soul's recovered health had been kept safe in Thy keeping who gavest it. Better truly. But how many and great waves of temptation seemed to hang over me after my boyhood! These my mother foresaw; and preferred to expose to them the clay whence I might afterwards be moulded, than the very cast, when made.
In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth),
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Thou mayest yet rescue me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing my childhood learned; for Thy service, that I speak, write, read, reckon. For Thou didst grant me Thy discipline, while I was learning vanities; and my sin of delighting in those vanities Thou hast forgiven.
In them, indeed, I learnt many a useful word, but these may as well be learned in things not vain; and that is the safe path for the steps of youth.
COSA - BOOK II, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
there, that I should be gratuitously evil, having no temptation to ill,
but the ill itself. It was foul, and I loved it; I loved to perish,
COSA - BOOK VI, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
had against the temptations which beset his very excellencies, or what
comfort in adversities, and what sweet joys Thy Bread had for the hidden
COSA - BOOK X, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
what temptations I can resist, what I cannot, I know not. And there is
hope, because Thou art faithful, Who wilt not suffer us to be tempted
above that we are able; but wilt with the temptation also make a way to
escape, that we may be able to bear it. I will confess then what I
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the matter of gratification. These temptations I daily endeavour
to resist, and I call on Thy right hand, and to Thee do I refer my
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enlightening my heart; deliver me out of all temptation. I fear not
uncleanness of meat, but the uncleanness of lusting. I know; that Noah
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Placed then amid these temptations, I strive daily against concupiscence
in eating and drinking. For it is not of such nature that I can settle
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and devout ears; and so to conclude the temptations of the lust of
the flesh, which yet assail me, groaning earnestly, and desiring to be
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To this is added another form of temptation more manifoldly dangerous.
For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which consisteth in the
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true Lord, who hast no lord; hath this third kind of temptation also
ceased from me, or can it cease through this whole life? To wish,
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By these temptations we are assailed daily, O Lord; without ceasing are
we assailed. Our daily furnace is the tongue of men. And in this way
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mine do not. For in other kinds of temptations I have some sort of means
of examining myself; in this, scarce any. For, in refraining my mind
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What then do I confess unto Thee in this kind of temptation, O Lord?
What, but that I am delighted with praise, but with truth itself, more
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bring with them a most dangerous temptation through the love of praise:
which, to establish a certain excellency of our own, solicits and
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Within also, within is another evil, arising out of a like temptation;
whereby men become vain, pleasing themselves in themselves, though they
COSA - BOOK XIII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
have moved amid the waves of temptations of the world, to hallow the
Gentiles in Thy Name, in Thy Baptism. And amid these things, many great
ENNEAD 03.05 - Of Love, or Eros., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
PASSIONAL LOVE MAY BE ELEVATING, THOUGH OPEN TO MISLEADING temptationS.
Thus he who does not desire to procreate seems to aspire to the possession of the beautiful in a higher degree. He who desires to procreate does no doubt desire to procreate the beautiful; but his desire indicates in him the presence of need, and dissatisfaction with mere possession of beauty; He thinks he will be procreating beauty, if he begets on that which is beautiful. They who wish to satisfy physical love against human laws, and nature, no doubt have a natural inclination as principle of a triple passion; but they lose their way straying from the right road for lack of knowledge of the end to which love was impelling them, of the goal of the aspiration (roused by) the desire of generation, and of the proper use of the image of beauty.120 They really do ignore Beauty itself.1125 They who love beautiful bodies without desiring to unite themselves to them, love them for their beauty only. Those who love the beauty of women, and desire union with them, love both beauty and perpetuity, so long as this object is not lost from sight. Both of these are temperate, but they who love bodies for their beauty only are the more virtuous. The former admire sensual beauty, and are content therewith; the latter recall intelligible beauty, but, without scorning visible beauty, regard it as an effect and image of the intelligible Beauty.121 Both, therefore, love beauty without ever needing to blush. But, as to those (who violate laws human and divine), love of beauty misleads them to falling into ugliness; for the desire of good may often mislead to a fall into evil. Such is love considered as a passion of the soul.
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
Passional love elevating, though open to misleading temptations, iii. 5.1 (50-1124).
Passionate love twofold, sensual and beautiful, iii. 5.1 (50-1122).
Jaap Sahib Text (Guru Gobind Singh), #Jaap Sahib, #unset, #Zen
Salutation to Thee O temptationless Lord !
Salutation to Thee O Supreme Yogi Lord!
Liber 46 - The Key of the Mysteries, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
they loved, and the dark temptations of despair! Thou wast their right,
and they have conquered thee! Now they can weep and believe, now they
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Thence come homicidal manias and temptations to commit suicide.
Thence comes that spirit of perversity which Edgar Poe has described in
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the temptations of misery and hunger.
Nothing is so terrifying as nothingness, and if one could ever
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
The Student must be prepared for temptations of the most extraordinary
subtlety; as the Scriptures of the Christians mystically put it, in
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themselves into temptations.
25. The name of the third Hall is Wisdom, beyond which stretch the
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temptation is to regard oneself as having attained, and so do no more
work.
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Portal of temptations which do ensnare the inner man.
We are now on a higher plane altogether. The Higher and Lower Selves
--
The temptation at this point is to create an Universe. He is able: the
necessity of so doing is strong within Him, and He may perhaps even
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (text), #Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
68. Souls enmeshed in worldliness cannot resist the temptation of 'woman and gold' and direct their
minds to God, even though these things bring upon them a thousand humiliations.
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which was susceptible to the temptations of ever-unreliable worldly success."[72] Carl T.
Jackson interprets kamini-kanchana to refer to the idea of sex and the idea of money as
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is, to resist the temptation of drinking the water or tasting the sauce? Similarly the worldly man who
suffers from the high fever of lust, and is thirsty for sensual pleasures, cannot resist temptations when
he is placed between the charms of beauty on one side, and those of wealth on the other. He is sure to
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87. Once a man attains God through intense Vairagya (freedom from worldly passions), temptations of
sex disappear, and he finds himself in no danger even from his own wife. If there are two unequal
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man observes him, because he feels that God sees him even then. He who can resist the temptations of
a young and seductive woman in a lonely forest, where he is unobserved by human eye, through the
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281. When you are forced by circumstances to go to a place of temptations, always remember the
Divine Mother. She will protect you from the many evils that may be lurking even in your heart. The
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the slightest covetousness in him; yet the sight of wealth and other objects of temptation will unsettle
his mind, howsoever holy he may be.
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so should one living in the world be always on his guard against its temptations. He who has once fallen
into the well of the world, so full of temptations, can hardly come out of it uninjured and stainless.
426. On being asked when the enemies of man, such as lust, anger etc., will be vanquished, the Master
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mix with the worldly and remains in the midst of the temptations of the world, one is likely to become
tainted, but one can remain pure by living out of the world,
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432. If once through intense Vairagya (dispassion) one attains God, then the inordinate temptations of
lust fall off, and a man finds himself in no danger even from his own wife. If there are two magnets at an
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children with food; but when He keeps us from going astray and holds us back from temptations, He is
truly gracious.
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Though strongly tempted to jump in and enjoy the scene, he resisted the temptation, and coming down
the ladder, spoke of the glory of the garden to those outside it. Brahman is like that walled garden.
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hunger and thirst-that you are the immutable Atman, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolutenever theless, the moment the body is subject to ailments or the mind encounters the temptations of
the world and is overwhelmed by the transient pleasures of wealth and sex, and in consequence you
Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen. Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beautya worship as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty, the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states, especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie' (Symp.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved love of the body (compare Charm.; Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless, to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship (Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably attri buted to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities; and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship. They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him, but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than was possible in a great household of slaves.
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine whether he is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or of the coarse Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the Symposium) half in jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.' We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations. Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology 'the greatest of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas who have been preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
pany and two none'; 'the only way to get rid of a temptation is to
yield to it', etc., etc. My own favourite coinage is: 'One should not
The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Let us notice, in passing, that the secular scenes of the temptation conform themselves to that
of religious iconographies. Adam and Eve are always represented, separated by the trunk of
The Epistle of James, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
12 Blessed is the man who perseveres in temptation, for when he has been proved he will receive the crown of life that he promised to those who love him.
13 No one experiencing temptation should say, “I am being tempted by God”;
for God is not subject to temptation to evil, and he himself tempts no one.
14 Rather, each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death.
the Eternal Wisdom, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
18) Visit not the doers of miracles. They have wandered from the path of the truth; they have allowed their minds to be caught in the snare of psychical powers which are so many temptations on the path of the pilgrims to the Brahman. Beware of such powers and do not desire them. ~ Ramakrishna
19) He whose heart longs after the Deity, has no time for anything else. ~ Ramakrishna
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10) Count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations, knowing this that the trying of your faith work-eth patience. ~ James 1. 2, 3
11) Blessed is the man that endureth temptation. ~ James I 12
12) Is it asked, who is the most excellent of the strong? I reply, it is he who possesses patience. ~ Sutra in 42 articles
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11) We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out,-and having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil. ~ Timothy VI.7
12) O you who are vain of your mortal possessions, know that wealth is a heavy barrier between the seeker and the Desired. ~ Baha-ullah
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3) The man who lives in the bosom of the temptations of the world and attains perfection, is the true hero. ~ Ramakrishna
4) A boat can be in the water, but the water ought not to be in the boat. So the aspirant may live in the world, but the world should find no place in him. ~ Ramakrishna
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21) He is the perfect athlete who surmounts temptations and the incline of his nature towards sin and exercises over his mind domination and empire. ~ J. Tauler. Institutions
22)Who is the Wise man? Whosoever is constantly learning something from one man or another. Who is the rich man? Whosoever is contented with his lot. Who is the strong man? Whosoever is capable of self-mastery. ~ Talmud
The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man;
and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,
but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 I speak as to wise men; you judge what I say.
The First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
8 And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. 9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
10 For the love of money is the root of all evil:
The Gospel According to Luke, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The temptation of Jesus
4 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit 2 for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry.
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13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
The Galilean Ministry and Rejection at Nazareth
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11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. 14 And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 15 But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.
The Parable of the Lamp
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And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
Further Teachings on Prayer
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39 And he came out, and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. 40 And when he came to the place he said to them, Pray that you may not enter into temptation. 41 And he withdrew from them about a stones throw, and knelt down and prayed,
42 Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
45 And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, 46 and he said to them, Why do you sleep? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus
The Gospel According to Mark, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
37 And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38 "Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
39 Again He went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him. 41 And He came the third time, and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough; the hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 "Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!"
The Gospel According to Matthew, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The temptation of Jesus
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, comm and these stones to become loaves of bread."
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And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
14 For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you;
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7 "Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes! 8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. 10 "See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
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40 And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "So, could you not watch with me one hour? 41 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
42 Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done." 43 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44 So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words. 45 Then he came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand."
The Letter to the Hebrews, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation; in the day of temptation in the desert,
9 Where your fathers tempted me, proved and saw my works, 10 Forty years: for which cause I was offended with this generation, and I said: They always err in heart. And they have not known my ways, 11 As I have sworn in my wrath: If they shall enter into my rest.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ or the Apocalypse, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation,
which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
The Riddle of this World, #unknown, #Unknown, #unset
mental, were the temptation that led to the fall. For to the original being
of light on the verge of the descent the one thing unknown was the
The Second Epistle of Peter, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but delivered them, drawn down by infernal ropes to the lower hell, unto torments, to be reserved unto judgment: 5 And spared not the original world, but preserved Noe, the eighth person, the preacher of justice, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. 6 And reducing the cities of the Sodomites, and of the Gomorrhites, into ashes, condemned them to be overthrown, making them an example to those that should after act wickedly. 7 And delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation of the wicked. 8 For in sight and hearing he was just: dwelling among them, who from day to day vexed the just soul with unjust works. 9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly from temptation, but to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be tormented. 10 And especially them who walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government, audacious, self willed, they fear not to bring in sects, blaspheming.
11 Whereas angels who are greater in strength and power, bring not against themselves a railing judgment. 12 But these men, as irrational beasts, naturally tending to the snare and to destruction, blaspheming those things which they know not, shall perish in their corruption, 13 Receiving the reward of their injustice, counting for a pleasure the delights of a day: stains and spots, sporting themselves to excess, rioting in their feasts with you: 14 Having eyes full of adultery and of sin that ceaseth not: alluring unstable souls, having their heart exercised with covetousness, children of malediction: 15 Leaving the right way they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam of Bosor, who loved the wages of iniquity, 16 But had a check of his madness, the dumb beast used to the yoke, which speaking with man's voice, forbade the folly of the prophet.
The Shadow Out Of Time, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
And then the morbid temptation to look down at myself became greater and greater, till
one night I could not resist it. At first my downward glance revealed nothing whatever. A
The Waiting, #Labyrinths, #Jorge Luis Borges, #Poetry
given in to the temptation of counting the days and the hours, but this
confinement was different, for it had no endunless one morning the
--- Overview of noun temptation
The noun temptation has 3 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (8) temptation, enticement ::: (something that seduces or has the quality to seduce)
2. temptation ::: (the desire to have or do something that you know you should avoid; "he felt the temptation and his will power weakened")
3. enticement, temptation ::: (the act of influencing by exciting hope or desire; "his enticements were shameless")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun temptation
3 senses of temptation
Sense 1
temptation, enticement
=> influence
=> determinant, determiner, determinative, determining factor, causal factor
=> cognitive factor
=> cognition, knowledge, noesis
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
temptation
=> desire
=> feeling
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
enticement, temptation
=> influence
=> causing, causation
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun temptation
2 of 3 senses of temptation
Sense 1
temptation, enticement
=> forbidden fruit
=> bait, come-on, hook, lure, sweetener
=> allurement
Sense 3
enticement, temptation
=> blandishment, wheedling
=> leading astray, leading off
=> seduction
=> solicitation, allurement
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun temptation
3 senses of temptation
Sense 1
temptation, enticement
=> influence
Sense 2
temptation
=> desire
Sense 3
enticement, temptation
=> influence
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun temptation
3 senses of temptation
Sense 1
temptation, enticement
-> influence
=> imponderable
=> imprint
=> morale builder
=> pestilence, canker
=> support
=> temptation, enticement
Sense 2
temptation
-> desire
=> ambition, aspiration, dream
=> bloodlust
=> temptation
=> craving
=> wish, wishing, want
=> longing, yearning, hungriness
=> sexual desire, eros, concupiscence, physical attraction
=> urge, itch
=> caprice, impulse, whim
Sense 3
enticement, temptation
-> influence
=> cross-pollination
=> exposure
=> impingement, encroachment, impact
=> manipulation, use
=> hypnotism, mesmerism, suggestion
=> enticement, temptation
--- Grep of noun temptation
temptation
Wikipedia - Ain't Too Proud to Beg -- Single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - All I Need (The Temptations song) -- Song of The Temptations
Wikipedia - Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation -- 2008 film by James Ryan
Wikipedia - Black Symphony -- 2008 live album by Within Temptation
Wikipedia - Chasing the Devil: Temptation -- 2015 studio album by Krayzie Bone
Wikipedia - Entertain You -- Single from Dutch symphonic metal and rock band Within Temptation
Wikipedia - Fighting Temptation -- Song by Beyonce, Missy Elliott, MC Lyte, Free
Wikipedia - Further Temptations -- album by The Drones
Wikipedia - Get Ready (The Temptations song) -- Song by The Temptations
Wikipedia - Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue) -- Song by The Temptations
Wikipedia - I'll Be in Trouble -- 1964 single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - Into Temptation (film) -- United States 2009 independent drama film
Wikipedia - In Vain (Within Temptation song) -- Single from Dutch symphonic metal and rock band Within Temptation
Wikipedia - It's Growing -- 1965 single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - I Wish It Would Rain -- 1967 single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - Jansson's temptation -- Swedish potato casserole
Wikipedia - Landscape with the Temptation of Christ -- Painting by Joos de Momper
Wikipedia - Landscape with the Temptation of St Anthony (Savery) -- Painting by Roelandt Savery
Wikipedia - Lead Us Not into Temptation (film) -- 1922 film
Wikipedia - List of Temptation of Wife episodes -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Mother Earth (Within Temptation song) -- 2002 single by Within Temptation
Wikipedia - Mount of Temptation -- Hill in the Judean Desert
Wikipedia - My Baby (The Temptations song) -- The Temptations song
Wikipedia - My One Temptation -- 1988 single by Mica Paris
Wikipedia - Night of Temptation -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - Our Farewell -- 2001 single by Within Temptation
Wikipedia - Port of Temptation -- 1951 film
Wikipedia - Power of Temptation -- 1922 film
Wikipedia - Shakey Ground -- 1975 single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - Since I Lost My Baby -- 1965 single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - Street of Temptation -- 1962 film
Wikipedia - Temptation (1915 film) -- 1915 film
Wikipedia - Temptation (1923 film) -- 1923 film by Edward LeSaint
Wikipedia - Temptation (1929 film) -- 1929 film
Wikipedia - Temptation (1935 film) -- US 1935 film
Wikipedia - Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor -- Film by Tyler Perry
Wikipedia - Temptation (Heaven 17 song) -- 1983 single by Heaven 17
Wikipedia - Temptation in the Summer Wind -- 1972 film
Wikipedia - Temptation Island (TV series) -- American reality television program
Wikipedia - Temptation of Christ
Wikipedia - Temptation of Saint Anthony in visual arts
Wikipedia - Temptation of St. Thomas (Velazquez) -- Painting by Diego Velazquez
Wikipedia - Temptation of Wife (2012 TV series) -- Philippine television series
Wikipedia - Temptations of a Shop Girl -- 1927 film by Tom Terriss
Wikipedia - Temptations of Christ
Wikipedia - Temptation's Workshop -- 1932 film
Wikipedia - Temptation
Wikipedia - The City of Temptation -- 1925 film
Wikipedia - The Cub Reporter's Temptation -- 1913 film
Wikipedia - The Great Temptation -- 1952 film
Wikipedia - The Green Temptation -- 1922 film by William Desmond Taylor
Wikipedia - The Hour of Temptation -- 1936 film
Wikipedia - The Last Temptation of Christ (film) -- 1988 film directed by Martin Scorsese
Wikipedia - The Last Temptation of Christ (novel) -- 1955 historical novel by Nikos Kazantzakis
Wikipedia - The Last Temptation of Christ
Wikipedia - The Right Temptation -- 2001 film by Lyndon Chubbuck
Wikipedia - The Temptation of Carlton Earle -- 1923 film
Wikipedia - The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Flaubert)
Wikipedia - The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Savoldo) -- C. 1521 painting by Girolamo Savoldo
Wikipedia - The Temptation of Saint Jerome -- Painting by Girolamo Savoldo
Wikipedia - The temptation of St. Anthony in visual arts
Wikipedia - The Temptation of St Anthony (Schongauer)
Wikipedia - The Temptation of St Anthony (Utrecht) -- Painting by a follower of Jheronimus Bosch
Wikipedia - The Temptation of St. Tony -- 2009 film
Wikipedia - The Temptations (miniseries) -- 1998 television miniseries by Allan Arkush
Wikipedia - The Temptations -- American rhythm and blues group
Wikipedia - The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie -- 1989 film by Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman
Wikipedia - The Way You Do the Things You Do -- 1964 single by The Temptations
Wikipedia - Within Temptation -- Dutch rock band
Wikipedia - You're My Everything (The Temptations song) -- 1967 single by The Temptations
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8114015-a-duke-s-temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8141122-recipe-for-temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/826770.The_Temptations_of_Big_Bear
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8475775-temptation-of-teresa
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8540918-tangled-temptations
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8737.The_Last_Temptation_of_Christ
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8741.The_Last_Temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/908011.Sheikh_s_Temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9573284-tainted-by-temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/962686.Creation_and_Fall_Temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9787263-in-the-garden-of-temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97992.The_Temptation_of_Elminster
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9850897-temptation
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17128026.Temptation_Tales
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Christology#Temptation_of_Christ
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Ary_Scheffer_-_The_Temptation_of_Christ_(1854).jpg
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Jesus#Baptism_and_temptation
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Serpent_(Bible)#Temptation_of_the_Christ
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Temptation_of_Christ
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Temptation_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/The_Transcendental_Temptation:_A_Critique_of_Religion_and_the_Paranormal
auromere - dalai-lama-on-women-and-temptation
Integral World - Epistemological Soap, Naturalistic Methodologies and Evolution, Resisting the "Transcendental Temptation", David Lane
Integral World - The Temptations of Prince Agib, Why the Famous Arabian Nights Story Reveals the Secret of Being Human, David Lane
Integral World - Transforming Spirituality: Moving Beyond the Patriarchal Temptation, by Mushin J. Schilling
dedroidify.blogspot - liliths-temptation-island
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Art/TheTemptationOfStAnthonyRops
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ConstantTemptation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/DefByTemptation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TemptationIsland
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheLastTemptationOfChrist
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheToxicAvengerPartIIITheLastTemptationOfToxie
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MadeOfTemptation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFinalTemptation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLastTemptation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/TheTemptations
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/WithinTemptation
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E9TheLastTemptationOfHomer
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/Temptation2007
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheTemptations
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/BeyondTemptation
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Ary_Scheffer_-_The_Temptation_of_Christ_(1854).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Blake_The_Third_Temptation,_1803-05_(Butlin_476).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Briton_Rivi%C3%A8re_-_The_Temptation_in_the_Wilderness.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Christ%27s_temptation_(Monreale).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:William_Blake_-_The_Temptation_and_Fall_of_Eve_(Illustration_to_Milton%27s_%22Paradise_Lost%22)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:GlobalUsage/Ary_Scheffer_-_The_Temptation_of_Christ_(1854).jpg
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Temptation
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Temptations
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Last_Temptation_of_Christ_(film)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Within_Temptation
The Question of God (1999 - 2000) - God has made a bet with the Devil: if one human of the Devil's choosing can't prove that humanity is decent, God will scrap all of creation and start over. The Devil chooses Detroit car assembly line worker Bob Alman. Now Bob has to live a decent life with no hints from God and constant temptation f...
The Last Temptation Of Christ(1988) - This controversial drama, based on a novel by an author named Nikos Kazantzakis, posits a view of Jesus (Willem Dafoe) as a human being, falling to sin instead of fighting it before assuming his place in religious history.
Elmer Gantry(1960) - Elmer Gantry, salesman, teams up with Sister Sharon Falconer, evangelist, to sell religion to America in the 1920's. They make enough money to build a temple, and Sister Sharon falls for Elmer. Elmer, is tested by temptation and almost capitulates, but is then wrongly accused by the jilted temptress...
The Temptations(1998) - Biography of the singers who formed the hit Motown muisical act, The Temptations.
Def By Temptation(1990) - An evil succubus is preying on libidinous black men in New York, and all that stands in her way is a minister-in-training, an aspiring actor, and a cop that specializes in cases involving the supernatural.
From Beyond The Grave(1974) - Anthology film from Amicus adapted from four short stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes strung together about an antique dealer who owns a shop called Temptations Ltd. and the fate that befalls his customers who try to cheat him. Stories include "The Gate Crasher" with David Warner who frees an evil entity...
The Toxic Avenger Part III(1989) - Subtitle: "The Last Temptation Of Toxie". Toxie finds he has nothing to do as a superhero, as he has ridden his city of evil. So he decides to go to work for a major corporation, which he discovers may be the evilest of all his adversaries.
https://myanimelist.net/manga/335/Gravitation__Voice_of_Temptation
Crimson Peak (2015) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 59min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror | 16 October 2015 (USA) -- In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds - and remembers. Director: Guillermo del Toro Writers:
Last Night (2010) ::: 6.6/10 -- R | 1h 33min | Drama, Romance | 16 February 2011 (France) -- The story follows a married couple, apart for a night while the husband takes a business trip with a colleague to whom he's attracted. While he's resisting temptation, his wife encounters her past love. Director: Massy Tadjedin Writer:
Little Children (2006) ::: 7.5/10 -- R | 2h 17min | Drama, Romance | 9 February 2007 (USA) -- The lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations in suburban Massachusetts. Director: Todd Field Writers:
Menace II Society (1993) ::: 7.5/10 -- R | 1h 37min | Crime, Drama, Thriller | 26 May 1993 (USA) -- A young street hustler attempts to escape the rigors and temptations of the ghetto in a quest for a better life. Directors: Albert Hughes (as The Hughes Brothers), Allen Hughes (as The Hughes Brothers) Writers:
Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) ::: 7.6/10 -- Matka Joanna od Aniolw (original title) -- Mother Joan of the Angels Poster A priest is sent to a small parish in the Polish countryside which is believed to be under demonic possession and there he finds his own temptations awaiting. Director: Jerzy Kawalerowicz Writers: Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (novel), Tadeusz Konwicki (screenplay) | 1 more credit
Rambling Rose (1991) ::: 6.6/10 -- R | 1h 52min | Drama | 20 September 1991 (USA) -- A young woman who exudes sexuality battles temptation. Director: Martha Coolidge Writers: Calder Willingham (based on the book by), Calder Willingham (screenplay by)
The Last Supper (1995) ::: 6.8/10 -- R | 1h 32min | Comedy, Crime, Drama | 5 April 1996 (USA) -- A group of idealistic, but frustrated, liberals succumb to the temptation of murdering rightwing pundits for their political beliefs. Director: Stacy Title Writer: Dan Rosen (screenplay) Stars:
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) ::: 7.5/10 -- R | 2h 44min | Drama | 12 August 1988 (Canada) -- The life of Jesus Christ, his journey through life as he faces the struggles all humans do, and his final temptation on the cross. Director: Martin Scorsese Writers: Nikos Kazantzakis (novel), Paul Schrader (screenplay)
The Noose (1958) ::: 7.7/10 -- Petla (original title) -- The Noose Poster One day in the life of an alcohol addict. With the help of his girlfriend Krysia, Kuba attempts to regain control of his life. But when she's at work, Kuba is home alone, and it becomes hard not to resist the temptation. Director: Wojciech Has (as Wojciech J. Has) Writers: Marek Hlasko (story), Wojciech Has (story) (as Wojciech J. Has) | 1
Wolf (2013) ::: 7.3/10 -- Unrated | 2h 2min | Crime, Drama, Thriller | 19 September 2013 -- Wolf Poster -- A promising kickboxer struggles to resist the temptations of a life of crime. Director: Jim Taihuttu Writer:
https://arrow.fandom.com/wiki/The_Last_Temptation_of_Barry_Allen,_Pt._1
https://arrow.fandom.com/wiki/The_Last_Temptation_of_Barry_Allen,_Pt._2
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/The_Flash_(2014_TV_Series)_Episode:_The_Last_Temptation_of_Barry_Allen,_Pt._1
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/The_Flash_(2014_TV_Series)_Episode:_The_Last_Temptation_of_Barry_Allen,_Pt._2
https://dreamfiction.fandom.com/wiki/Temptation_(1976)
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Temptations
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/The_Temptation_of_Elminster
https://gabrielknight.fandom.com/wiki/Gabriel_Knight:_Temptation
https://gabrielknight.fandom.com/wiki/The_Temptation:_a_Gabriel_Knight_interlude
https://guildopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ruthless_Temptations
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Bachelor_Party_2:_The_Last_Temptation
https://midnight-texas.fandom.com/wiki/Last_Temptation_of_Midnight
https://renandstimpy.fandom.com/wiki/The_Last_Temptation
https://spellborn.fandom.com/wiki/Within_Temptation_The_Howling
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Voyage_of_Temptation
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/King_(The_Temptation_of_Sarah_Jane_Smith)
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Temptation_of_Sarah_Jane_Smith_(TV_story)
Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen -- -- Madhouse -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Game Psychological Thriller Seinen -- Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen -- Owing to an increasing debt, Kaiji Itou ends up resuming his old lifestyle. One day, while walking on the street, he stumbles upon Yuuji Endou, who is hunting Kaiji due to the money he owes to the Teiai Group. Unaware of this, Kaiji eagerly follows Endou, hoping for a chance to participate in another gamble, but soon finds out the loan shark's real intentions when he is kidnapped. -- -- Given that Kaiji is unable to pay off his huge debt, the Teiai Group instead sends him to work in an underground labor camp. He is told that he will have to live in this hell for 15 years, alongside other debtors, until he can earn his freedom. His only hope to put an early end to this nightmare is by saving enough money to be able to go back to the surface for a single day. Once he is there, he plans to obtain the remaining money needed to settle his account by making a high-stakes wager. However, as many temptations threaten his scarce income, Kaiji may have to resort to gambling sooner than he had expected. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 145,107 8.25
Junjou Romantica -- -- Studio Deen -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Romance Shounen Ai -- Junjou Romantica Junjou Romantica -- Misaki Takahashi is a regular high school student who is preparing for his university entrance exams. In order to reduce the stress of studying, or so he hopes, he accepts the help of his older brother's best friend, and famous author, Akihiko Usami. However, Masaki is about to find out that Usami's books are of a very naughty genre, and that there may be something naughty waking up inside Masaki as well. -- -- Junjou Romantica also follows the story of two other couples loosely connected to Masaki and Usami's "Romantica." -- -- Egoist shows the very passionate, but often complicated, relationship between university professor Hiroki Kamijou (whose life has reached an all time low) and paediatrician Nowaki Kusama, who falls for Hiroki at first sight and would do anything to make him happy. -- -- The third story, "Terrorist," shows just how obsessive love can become when rich eighteen-year-old Shinobu Takatsuki finally discovers something that he cannot have so easily—the literature professor You Miyagi. -- -- There is passion abound as these three couples try to achieve their goals in life while also falling into temptation and anguish with their partners. -- -- Licensor: -- Nozomi Entertainment -- TV - Apr 11, 2008 -- 211,072 7.62
Kiss x Sis -- -- feel. -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Ecchi Harem Romance School Seinen -- Kiss x Sis Kiss x Sis -- When Keita Suminoe's father remarried, not only did he gain a new mother, but elder twin sisters as well. Distinct yet similar, the homely and mature Ako is a former student council president, while the athletic and aloof Riko is the previous disciplinary president. The three of them have been together since kindergarten, resulting in a deep bond between the siblings. However, over time, their relationship developed into something more romantic—and erotic . -- -- Now in his last year of middle school, Keita has already received a sports recommendation, but it's from a different high school than his two sisters. Disappointed, both sisters try to change his mind, and he agrees, giving in to their desperate pleas. Unaware of the consequences, he now has to attempt to study for his high school exams while warding off the advances of his lust-driven sisters. With their parent's blessings, Ako and Riko strive to be Keita's future wife, leaving him to try his best to keep the relationship between them strictly platonic. However, with two beautiful girls vying for his attention, will Keita be able to withstand the endless temptations? -- -- OVA - Dec 22, 2008 -- 264,581 6.92
Kiss x Sis (TV) -- -- feel. -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Harem Comedy Romance Ecchi School Seinen -- Kiss x Sis (TV) Kiss x Sis (TV) -- After Keita Suminoe's mother passed away, his father promptly remarried, introducing two step-sisters into Keita's life: twins Ako and Riko. But since their fateful first encounter, a surge of incestuous love for their younger brother overcame the girls, beginning a lifelong feud for his heart. -- -- Now at the end of his middle school career, Keita studies fervently to be able to attend Ako and Riko's high school. While doing so however, he must resolve his conflicting feelings for his siblings and either reject or succumb to his sisters' intimate advances. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately for Keita—his sisters aren't the only women lusting after him, and there's no telling when the allure of temptation will get the better of the boy as well. -- -- TV - Apr 5, 2010 -- 458,418 6.70
Natsume Yuujinchou Movie: Utsusemi ni Musubu -- -- Shuka -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Demons Drama Shoujo Slice of Life Supernatural -- Natsume Yuujinchou Movie: Utsusemi ni Musubu Natsume Yuujinchou Movie: Utsusemi ni Musubu -- Takashi Natsume and his spirit companion Madara, nicknamed "Nyanko," continue returning the names of spirits from the Book of Friends given by his late grandmother Reiko Natsume. -- -- On his way back from school one day, Takashi encounters a lurking spirit named Monmonbou, who recalls memories of Takashi's grandmother after hearing his name. Takashi's natural curiosity leads him to explore a mysterious town where his grandmother used to live. Befriending her old acquaintance Yorie Tsumura and Yorie's son Mukuo, Takashi unveils more of his grandmother's past. -- -- In the meantime, Nyanko detours for food and stumbles upon a suspicious "Spirit Seed," which miraculously sprouts into a fruit tree overnight. Giving in to temptation, Nyanko consumes the fruit, splitting him into three. Seeking a solution to Nyanko's predicament, Takashi and his friends lend a hand, unexpectedly uncovering more secrets the town holds in the process. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Movie - Sep 29, 2018 -- 47,486 8.41
Natsume Yuujinchou Movie: Utsusemi ni Musubu -- -- Shuka -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Demons Drama Shoujo Slice of Life Supernatural -- Natsume Yuujinchou Movie: Utsusemi ni Musubu Natsume Yuujinchou Movie: Utsusemi ni Musubu -- Takashi Natsume and his spirit companion Madara, nicknamed "Nyanko," continue returning the names of spirits from the Book of Friends given by his late grandmother Reiko Natsume. -- -- On his way back from school one day, Takashi encounters a lurking spirit named Monmonbou, who recalls memories of Takashi's grandmother after hearing his name. Takashi's natural curiosity leads him to explore a mysterious town where his grandmother used to live. Befriending her old acquaintance Yorie Tsumura and Yorie's son Mukuo, Takashi unveils more of his grandmother's past. -- -- In the meantime, Nyanko detours for food and stumbles upon a suspicious "Spirit Seed," which miraculously sprouts into a fruit tree overnight. Giving in to temptation, Nyanko consumes the fruit, splitting him into three. Seeking a solution to Nyanko's predicament, Takashi and his friends lend a hand, unexpectedly uncovering more secrets the town holds in the process. -- -- Movie - Sep 29, 2018 -- 47,486 8.41
Negima!? -- -- Shaft -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Harem Comedy Supernatural Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy School -- Negima!? Negima!? -- A remake of the Negima anime with its own original story. -- -- Wizard Negi Springfield may be a boy, but he has a man-sized job to do! Fresh from the Academy of Magic, Negi continues his training as an instructor at Mahora Academy in Japan. But before he can get his Masters in magic, the 31 schoolgirls of Class 3-A are gonna keep him up all night cramming for a final exam in will power. Temptation aside, Negi has more on his syllabus than flirting and spells. Darkness is closing in, and Negi is gonna need help from his lovely student bodies to drive the ghouls from their school. These girls want to prove that they're the best in class, and extra credit is available to the cuties that aren't afraid of after-hours phantom fighting! -- -- (Source: DVD case) -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Sentai Filmworks -- TV - Oct 4, 2006 -- 79,110 7.00
Negima!? -- -- Shaft -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Harem Comedy Supernatural Magic Romance Ecchi Fantasy School -- Negima!? Negima!? -- A remake of the Negima anime with its own original story. -- -- Wizard Negi Springfield may be a boy, but he has a man-sized job to do! Fresh from the Academy of Magic, Negi continues his training as an instructor at Mahora Academy in Japan. But before he can get his Masters in magic, the 31 schoolgirls of Class 3-A are gonna keep him up all night cramming for a final exam in will power. Temptation aside, Negi has more on his syllabus than flirting and spells. Darkness is closing in, and Negi is gonna need help from his lovely student bodies to drive the ghouls from their school. These girls want to prove that they're the best in class, and extra credit is available to the cuties that aren't afraid of after-hours phantom fighting! -- -- (Source: DVD case) -- TV - Oct 4, 2006 -- 79,110 7.00
Shuumatsu no Harem -- -- AXsiZ, Studio Gokumi -- ? eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Harem Ecchi Shounen -- Shuumatsu no Harem Shuumatsu no Harem -- The Man-Killer Virus: a lethal disease that has eradicated 99.9% of the world's male population. Mizuhara Reito has been in cryogenic sleep for the past five years, leaving behind Tachibana Erisa, the girl of his dreams. When Reito awakens from the deep freeze, he emerges into a sex-crazed new world where he himself is the planet's most precious resource. Reito and four other male studs are given lives of luxury and one simple mission: repopulate the world by impregnating as many women as possible! All Reito wants, however, is to find his beloved Erisa who went missing three years ago. Can Reito resist temptation and find his one true love? -- -- (Source: Seven Seas Entertainment) -- TV - ??? ??, 2021 -- 15,282 N/A -- -- Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns -- -- Toei Animation -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Mystery Shounen -- Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns -- High school student Hajime Kindaichi is the supposed grandson of famous private detective Kosuke Kindaichi. Visiting Hong Kong for a fashion event with Kindaichi, our hero's girlfriend Miyuki is captured by a stranger in a case of mistaken identity. The journey to save Miyuki itself leads to yet another crime case... -- -- (Source: YTV) -- TV - Apr 5, 2014 -- 15,198 7.52
Shuumatsu no Harem -- -- AXsiZ, Studio Gokumi -- ? eps -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Harem Ecchi Shounen -- Shuumatsu no Harem Shuumatsu no Harem -- The Man-Killer Virus: a lethal disease that has eradicated 99.9% of the world's male population. Mizuhara Reito has been in cryogenic sleep for the past five years, leaving behind Tachibana Erisa, the girl of his dreams. When Reito awakens from the deep freeze, he emerges into a sex-crazed new world where he himself is the planet's most precious resource. Reito and four other male studs are given lives of luxury and one simple mission: repopulate the world by impregnating as many women as possible! All Reito wants, however, is to find his beloved Erisa who went missing three years ago. Can Reito resist temptation and find his one true love? -- -- (Source: Seven Seas Entertainment) -- TV - ??? ??, 2021 -- 15,282 N/AGinga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) -- -- Toei Animation -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Sci-Fi Adventure Space Drama Fantasy -- Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) Ginga Tetsudou 999 (Movie) -- Tetsurou Hoshino is a boy bent on obtaining an immortal mechanical body in order to take revenge against his mother's murderer, the machine man Count Mecha. However, due to the incredible cost of obtaining what he seeks, his only hope is to steal a boarding pass for the Galaxy Express 999, a space train that travels across the galaxy and whose final stop is a planet where the metal replacements are provided for free. After swiping a pass, Tetsurou is pursued by the police and ends up collapsing into the arms of a mysterious woman named Maetel, who closely resembles his mother. Once he awakens, she tells the boy that she will provide him entry onto the 999 as long as he agrees to travel with her. Accepting her proposition, Tetsurou boards the cosmic railway with Maetel and begins a journey across the galaxy. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Discotek Media -- Movie - Aug 4, 1979 -- 15,280 7.56
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lilith_in_Temptation_of_Adam_and_Eve
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Temptation_of_Adam_and_Eve
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Paintings_of_Temptation_of_Saint_Anthony
1990 (The Temptations album)
20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection: The Best of The Temptations, Volume 1 The '60s
All I Need (The Temptations song)
And Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Anthology (The Temptations album)
A Song for You (The Temptations album)
Awesome (The Temptations album)
Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation
Back to Front (The Temptations album)
Chasing the Devil: Temptation
Cloud Nine (The Temptations album)
Cloud Nine (The Temptations song)
Def by Temptation
Diana Ross & the Supremes Join the Temptations
Don't Look Back (The Temptations song)
Enter (Within Temptation album)
Everybody Needs Love (The Temptations song)
Faster (Within Temptation song)
For Lovers Only (The Temptations album)
Fruit of Temptation
Get Ready (The Temptations song)
Greatest Hits II (The Temptations album)
Greatest Hits (The Temptations album)
Happy People (The Temptations song)
House Party (The Temptations album)
Into Temptation
Jansson's temptation
Landscape with the Temptation of St Anthony (Lorrain)
Landscape with the Temptation of St Anthony (Savery)
Lead Us Not into Temptation
Lead Us Not into Temptation (film)
Legacy (The Temptations album)
Let Your Hair Down (The Temptations song)
List of awards and nominations received by Within Temptation
List of the Temptations band members
Live at London's Talk of the Town (The Temptations album)
Live at the Copa (The Temptations album)
Los Angeles Temptation
Madam Temptation
Masterpiece (The Temptations album)
Masterpiece (The Temptations song)
Meet the Temptations
Memories (Within Temptation song)
Monastery of the Temptation
Mother Earth (Within Temptation album)
Mother Nature (The Temptations song)
Mount of Temptation
My Baby (The Temptations song)
My Girl (The Temptations song)
Night of Temptation
Paradise (The Temptations song)
Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)
Phoenix Rising (The Temptations album)
Port of Temptation
Power of Temptation
Reunion (The Temptations album)
Shot in the Dark (Within Temptation song)
Sky's the Limit (The Temptations album)
Solid Rock (The Temptations album)
Street of Temptation
Sweet Temptation (Hollow)
Temptation
Temptation's Workshop
Temptation (1935 film)
Temptation (1959 film)
Temptation (1967 American game show)
Temptation (2003 film)
Temptation (2007 American game show)
Temptation (Arash song)
Temptation (Australian game show)
Temptation Box
Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor
Temptation (disambiguation)
Temptation (Heaven 17 song)
Temptation in the Summer Wind
Temptation Island
Temptation Island (TV series)
Temptation (Monrose album)
Temptation (Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed song)
Temptation (New Order song)
Temptation (novella)
Temptation of a Monk
Temptation of Christ
Temptation of Saint Anthony in visual arts
Temptation of St. Thomas (Velzquez)
Temptation of Wife
Temptation of Wife (2012 TV series)
Temptation of Wolves
Temptation (Shelby Lynne album)
Temptations of Christ (Botticelli)
Temptation Waits
The City of Temptation
The Fighting Temptations
The First Temptation of Christ
The Great Temptation
The Hour of Temptation
The Last Temptation
The Last Temptation (Alice Cooper album)
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Temptation of Christ (film)
The Last Temptation of Homer
The Last Temptation of Krust
The Last Temptation of Reid
The Last Temptations
The Silent Force Tour (Within Temptation)
The Temptation of Barbizon
The Temptation of Innocence
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Ernst painting)
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (film)
The Temptation of Saint Anthony (novel)
The Temptation of St. Anthony
The Temptation of St Anthony (Bosch painting)
The Temptation of St. Anthony (Dal)
The Temptation of St. Tony
The Temptation of the Impossible
The Temptations
The Temptations discography
The Temptations Do The Temptations
The Temptations in a Mellow Mood
The Temptations (miniseries)
The Temptations Wish It Would Rain
The Temptations with a Lot o' Soul
The Temptin' Temptations
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie
The Transcendental Temptation
The Ultimate Collection (The Temptations album)
To Be Continued... (The Temptations album)
Together Again (The Temptations album)
Together (The Supremes and the Temptations album)
Treat Her Like a Lady (The Temptations song)
Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony
War (The Temptations song)
Within Temptation
Within Temptation discography
Woman's Temptation
You're My Everything (The Temptations song)
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recent: Section Maps - index table - favoritesSavitri --Savitri extended toc Savitri Section Map --1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
authors -- Crowley - Peterson - Borges - Wilber - Teresa -Aurobindo -Ramakrishna - Maharshi -Mother
places -- Garden - Inf. Art Gallery - Inf. Building - Inf. Library - Labyrinth - Library - School -Temple - Tower - Tower of MEM
powers -- Aspiration - Beauty - Concentration - Effort - Faith - Force - Grace - inspiration -Presence - Purity - Sincerity - surrender
difficulties -- cowardice - depres. - distract. - distress - dryness - evil - fear - forget - habits - impulse - incapacity - irritation - lost - mistakes - obscur. - problem - resist - sadness - self-deception - shame - sin - suffering
practices -- Lucid Dreaming - meditation - project - programming - Prayer - read Savitri - studysubjects -- CS - Cybernetics - Game Dev - Integral Theory - Integral Yoga - Kabbalah - Language - Philosophy - Poetry - Zen
6.01 books -- KC - ABA - Null -Savitri - SA O TAOC -SICP - The Gospel of SRK - TIC - The Library of Babel -TLD -TSOY - TTYODAS - TSZ - WOTM II
8 unsorted / add here -- Always - Everyday - Verbs