Temptation

Temptation is that feeling of attraction to something which looks appealing to an individual.

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• Why comes temptation but for man to meet
  And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
  And so be pedestaled in triumph?
  • Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book (1868-69), The Pope, line 1,185.

• I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people: they go commonly together.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 3. Subsect, XIII.

• Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation — especially the temptation to abuse power over others.
  • Al Gore, Address at New York University (25 May 2004) Full text online

• But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
  And tempts by making rich, not making poor.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle III, line 351.

• Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back,
  When gold and silver becks me to come on.
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 3, line 12.

• How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
  Makes ill deeds done!
  • William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act IV, scene 2, line 219.

• Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
  • William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act IV, scene 3, line 257.

• I am that way going to temptation,
  Where prayers cross.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act II, scene 2, line 158.

• Most dangerous
  Is that temptation that doth goad us on
  To sin in loving virtue.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act II, scene 2, line 181.

• To beguile many and be beguil'd by one.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act IV, scene 1, line 98.

• Know'st thou not any whom corrupting gold
  Would tempt unto a close exploit of death?
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act IV, scene 2, line 34.

• Sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
  When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
  Presuming on their changeful potency.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act IV, scene 4, line 97.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 784-85.

• What's done we partly may compute,
  But know not what's resisted.
  • Robert Burns, Address to Unco Guid, Stanza 8.

• So you tell yourself you are pretty fine clay
  To have tricked temptation and turned it away,
  But wait, my friend, for a different day;
  Wait till you want to want to!
  • Edmund Vance Cooke, Desire.

• The devil tempts us not—'tis we tempt him,
  Reckoning his skill with opportunity.
  • George Eliot, Felix Holt, Chapter XLVII.

• Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren.
  • Thou shalt abstain,
    Renounce, refrain.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, I. 4.

• Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours, that are but skin-deep.
  • Matthew Henry, Commentaries, Genesis, III.

• Temptations hurt not, though they have accesse;
  Satan o'ercomes none but by willingnesse.
  • Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648), Temptations.

• Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life.
  • James. I. 12.

• Honest bread is very well—it's the butter that makes the temptation.
  • Douglas Jerrold, The Catspaw.

• Get thee behind me, Satan.
  • Matthew, XVI. 23.

• Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure.
  • Bishop Robert South, Volume VI, Sermon 10.

• Could'st thou boast, O child of weakness!
  O'er the sons of wrong and strife,
  Were their strong temptations planted
  In thy path of life?
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, What the Voice Said.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• When you have overcome one temptation, you must he ready to enter the lists with another. As distrust, in some sense, is the mother of safety, so security is the gate of danger. A man had need to fear this most of all, that he fears not at all.
  • Thomas Brooks, p. 532.

• Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.
  • John Bunyan, p. 577.

• 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.
  • François Fénelon, p. 577.

• The realization of God's presence is the one sovereign remedy against temptation.
  • François Fénelon, p. 577.

• When tempted, the shortest and surest way is to act like a little child at the breast; when we show it a frightful monster, it shrinks back and buries its face in its mother's bosom, that it may no longer behold it.
  • François Fénelon, p. 578.

• Christian! thou knowest thou earriest gunpowder about thee. Desire them that carry fire to keep at a distance. It is a dangerous crisis, when a proud heart meets with flattering lips.
  • John Flavel, p. 578.

• In the hour of my distress,
  When temptations me oppress,
  And when I my sins confess,
  Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
  • Robert Herrick, p. 577.

• We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation — have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, p. 577.

• Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or strength each one hath. For occasions do not make a man frail, but they show what he is.
  • Thomas à Kempis, p. 578.