55 Temptation Quotes For Inspiration

Temptation is a universal experience, a pull that challenges our willpower and tests our resolve. It can lead us astray or inspire profound personal growth. The allure of temptation has been explored by thinkers, writers, and leaders throughout history, offering insights that can motivate and stir introspection. In today's fast-paced world, where distractions abound, reflecting on the words of wisdom from those who have grappled with temptation can offer guidance and encouragement. Here, we've curated a collection of 55 inspiring quotes about temptation to provoke thought, inspire strength, and remind us of our capacity to choose wisely. Dive in and explore these timeless reflections that resonate with the challenges we face in modern life.

1. “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” - Abraham Maslow

2. “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 Brontë

3. “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” - Martin Luther

4. “Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out...” - C.S. Lewis

5. “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

6. “There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings” - Alfred De Musset

7. “Power was my weakness and my temptation.” - J.K. Rowling

8. “I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

9. “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

10. “Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance.” - Sivananda

11. “Self-knowledge is better than self-control any day," Raquel said firmly. "And I know myself well enough to know how I act around cookies.” - Claudia Gray

12. “The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.” - Laurence Peter

13. “dangerous chemistry” - Emily Giffin

14. “People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.” - Terry Pratchett

15. “Temptation is stronger in the minds of people who are in doubt. Prayer makes it weaker.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

16. “Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know them” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

17. “When women go wrong, men go right after them.” - Mae West

18. “Loyalty was a great thing, but no lieutenants should be forced to choose between their leader and a circus with elephants.” - Neil Gaiman

19. “Choices enable temptation.” - Toba Beta

20. “But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

21. “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” - Will Rogers

22. “Nothing can hurt you except sin; nothing can grieve me except sin; nothing can defeat you except sin. Therefore, be on your guard, my Mansoul.” - John Bunyan

23. “But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.” - George Eliot

24. “Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me—I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.” - Tom Stoppard

25. “He whirled in the water and grinned at me. Damn, he was a handsome bastard. I realized he was half-naked. Blue swirls of tattoos painted his chest. When God made that chest, he did to tempt women.” - Ilona Andrews

26. “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

27. “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 H. Spurgeon

28. “Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.” - Margaret Atwood

29. “Just because a feeling is natural does not mean it should be indulged.” - Roseanna White

30. “...there's one thing you'll never be delivered from. It's a ten-letter word called temptation!” - Ty Adams

31. “I know that whatever the complex origins of my own homosexuality are, there have been conscious choices I've made to indulge - and therefore to intensify, probably - my homoerotic inclinations. As I look back over the course of my life, I regret the nights I have given in to temptations to lust that pulsed like hot, itching sores in my mind. And so I cling to this image - washed. I am washed, sanctified, justified through the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Whenever I look back on my baptism, I can remember that God has cleansed the stains of homosexual sin from the crevasses of my mind, heart, and body and included me in his family, the church, where I can find support, comfort, and provocation toward Christian maturity.” - Wesley Hill

32. “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

33. “Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.” - Catherynne M. Valente

34. “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

35. “He's pressing me to his chest. I melt. Oh, this is where I want to beI rest my head against him, and he kisses my hair repeatedly. This is home. He smells of linen, fabric softener, body wash, and my favourite smell - Christian. For a moment, I allow myself the illusion that all will be well, and it soothes my ravaged soul” - E.L. James

36. “In other words Jesus went into the desert to confront His enemy and throw down the gauntlet. He would prove Himself to be the legitimate shepherd of Israel by overcoming the temptations that had undone all of Israel's previous kings, including His mighty ancestor, King David.” - Swindoll Charles R.

37. “A relationship is like being in a forest, where snakes lurk awaiting the chance to entice.” - Anthony Liccione

38. “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

39. “If I’ve already thought through a situation and have a response prepared ahead of time in the event temptation rears its ugly head, it is that much easier to resist.” - Tim Tebow

40. “The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both a lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations that must have existed in a community—and communities, much though they are based on love, in fact because they are based on love, will always also be full of hatred, rivalry and passion—when it became clear that with sufficiently clever scheming, manipulation, and perhaps a bit of strategic bribery, they could arrange to have almost anyone they hated imprisoned or even hanged.” - David Graeber

41. “... the devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for ...” - Tucker Max

42. “First she said we were to keep clear of the Sirens, who sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers; but she said I might hear them myself so long as no one else did. Therefore, take me and bind me to the crosspiece half way up the mast; bind me as I stand upright, with a bond so fast that I cannot possibly break away, and lash the rope's ends to the mast itself. If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still.” - Homer

43. “With Stefan, the line between good and evil, right and wrong, becomes increasingly blurred.” - Melika Dannese Lux

44. “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

45. “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

46. “In answer to modern requests for signs and wonders, Our Lord might say, 'You repeat Satan's temptation, whenever you admire the wonders of science, and forget that I am the Author of the Universe and its science. Your scientists are the proofreaders, but not the authors of the Book of Nature; they can see and examine My handiwork, but they cannot create one atom themselves. You would tempt Me to prove Myself omnipotent by meaningless tests...You tempt Me after you have willfully destroyed your own cities with bombs by shrieking out, "Why does God not stop this war?" You tempt Me, saying that I have no power, unless I show it at your beck and call. This, if you remember, is exactly how Satan tempted Me in the desert.I have never had many followers on the lofty heights of Divine truth, I know; for instance, I have hardly had the intelligentsia. I refuse to perform stunts to win them, for they would not really be won that way. It is only when I am seen on the Cross that I really draw men to Myself; it is by sacrifice, and not by marvels, that I must make My appeal. I must win followers not with test tubes, but with My blood; not with material power, but with love; not with celestial fireworks, but with the right use of reason and free will.” - Fulton J. Sheen

47. “Entering the foyer, Royale already decided that he would thank Shake once more for being by his side at Keena’s recital. But she stunned him by eagerly waiting for him just like old times—on her knees wearing only a collar and a leash.” - S.B. Redd

48. “Don’t let affluence make you impoverished of God.” - Jon Bloom

49. “Why ask for your daily bread when you own the bakery?” - Randy Alcorn

50. “I wonder if pain comes from surrendering or resisting?” - Donna Lynn Hope

51. “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.” - Soren Kierkegaard

52. “Ah! but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was given to him ....” - Anthony Hope

53. “I have a deep appreciation for anything that challenges my morality. I tend to wonder which thing or person might overpower my beliefs and would I avoid it altogether in order to say, "It didn't conquer me," or would I accept the challenge head-on in an attempt to prevail? Which requires greater courage?” - Donna Lynn Hope

54. “No matter how many sins you make or how slow you travel back toward God's valley, you are still way ahead of a person who never made a mistake and doesn't know what it is like to climb out of a pit of shame and rise above their temptations.” - Shannon L. Alder

55. “Our response to temptation reveals the substance of our faith.” - Dillon Burroughs