In a world filled with countless distractions and alluring enticements, the ability to resist temptation is nothing short of a superpower. Whether it's the craving for indulgence, the pull of procrastination, or the allure of the uncharted, temptation wears many faces and tests the limits of our resolve. In times when our willpower is stretched thin, a few words of wisdom can serve as a beacon of strength and guidance. This curated collection of inspiring quotes on temptation offers insights and encouragement from some of history's most profound thinkers and leaders. Each quote is a reminder that while temptation is inevitable, we possess the inner strength to overcome it and emerge more resilient than ever.
1. “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” - Oscar Wilde
2. “Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.” - Mae West
3. “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
4. “I can resist anything except temptation.” - Oscar Wilde
5. “Hard to say what's right when all I wanna do is wrong.” - Prince
6. “[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
7. “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
8. “Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?Ford Prefect: I wouldn't-Arthur Dent: Oh.Ford Prefect: What happened?Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.” - Douglas Adams
9. “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
10. “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” - Mark Twain
11. “Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare. ” - John Dryden
12. “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
13. “Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?” - Chuck Palahniuk
14. “Saintliness is also a temptation.” - Jean Anouilh
15. “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
16. “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
17. “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
18. “The problem with temptation is that you may not get another chance.” - Laurence Peter
19. “People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.” - Terry Pratchett
20. “My head spins as I glance away, refusing to get sucked back into his gaze when so much is at risk.” - Emily Giffin
21. “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
22. “It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
23. “Dad, will they ever come back?""No. And yes." Dad tucked away his harmonica. "No not them. But yes, other people like them. Not in a carnival. God knows what shape they'll come in next. But sunrise, noon, or at the latest, sunset tomorrow they'll show. They're on the road.""Oh, no," said Will."Oh, yes, said Dad. "We got to watch out the rest of our lives. The fight's just begun."They moved around the carousel slowly."What will they look like? How will we know them?""Why," said Dad, quietly, "maybe they're already here."Both boys looked around swiftly.But there was only the meadow, the machine, and themselves.Will looked at Jim, at his father, and then down at his own body and hands. He glanced up at Dad.Dad nodded, once, gravely, and then nodded at the carousel, and stepped up on it, and touched a brass pole.Will stepped up beside him. Jim stepped up beside Will.Jim stroked a horse's mane. Will patted a horse's shoulders.The great machine softly tilted in the tides of night.Just three times around, ahead, thought Will. Hey.Just four times around, ahead, thought Jim. Boy.Just ten times around, back, thought Charles Halloway. Lord.Each read the thoughts in the other's eyes.How easy, thought Will.Just this once, thought Jim.But then, thought Charles Halloway, once you start, you'd always come back. One more ride and one more ride. And, after awhile, you'd offer rides to friends, and more friends until finally...The thought hit them all in the same quiet moment....finally you wind up owner of the carousel, keeper of the freaks...proprietor for some small part of eternity of the traveling dark carnival shows....Maybe, said their eyes, they're already here.” - Ray Bradbury
24. “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
25. “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
26. “The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.” - Edith Wharton
27. “Lead me not into temptation. I can find the way myself.” - Jane Seabrook
28. “But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.” - George Eliot
29. “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
30. “Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon!” - Matthew Gregory Lewis
31. “God tests, but he does not tempt.” - Criss Jami
32. “Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.” - Margaret Atwood
33. “...there's one thing you'll never be delivered from. It's a ten-letter word called temptation!” - Ty Adams
34. “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
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. “A relationship is like being in a forest, where snakes lurk awaiting the chance to entice.” - Anthony Liccione
37. “The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.” - Thomas Merton
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. “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
40. “... the devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for ...” - Tucker Max
41. “With Stefan, the line between good and evil, right and wrong, becomes increasingly blurred.” - Melika Dannese Lux
42. “What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!” - Wilkie Collins
43. “He who does not know how to encircle a girl so that she loses sight of everything he does not want her to see, he who does not know how to poetize himself into a girl so that it is from her that everything proceeds as he wants it-he is and remains a bungler” - Soren Kierkegaard
44. “They were not unfortunate girls who, as outcasts or in the belief that they were cast out by society, grieved wholesomely and intensely and, once in a while at times when the heart was too full, ventilated it in hate or forgiveness. No visible change took place in them; they lived in the accustomed context, were respected as always, and yet they were changed, almost unaccountably to themselves and incomprehensibly to others. Their lives were not cracked or broken, as others' were, but were bent into themselves; lost to others, they futilely sought to find themselves.” - Soren Kierkegaard
45. “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
46. “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
47. “The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes. Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus and his word until the end.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
48. “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
49. “Don’t let affluence make you impoverished of God.” - Jon Bloom
50. “This much is true: When you are about to effect the lives of hundreds of people, Satan will do everything he can to prevent it from happening. Often pride and anger are his best assassins.” - Shannon L. Alder
51. “Why ask for your daily bread when you own the bakery?” - Randy Alcorn
52. “Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.” - Billy Sunday
53. “I wonder if pain comes from surrendering or resisting?” - Donna Lynn Hope
54. “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
55. “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
56. “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
