#temptation

Temptations, unlike opportunities, will always give you many second chances. ↗

— Orlando A. Battista

#chances #give #many #opportunities #second

When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation. ↗

— Elizabeth Kostova

#temptation

Chapter Eleven: C’mon good girl, be bad. ↗

— Nicki Elson

#sex #temptation #temptation

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#find #many #only #prohibition #temptation

One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception - at least some of the time, incompetent or crazy. ↗

— John Gardner

#devil #editors #exception #fight #incompetent

You know, there's that temptation in interviews to make yourself sound - well, to give yourself a bit of mystery. ↗

— Johnny Vegas

#give #interviews #know #make #mystery

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

#dark #evil #fear #internal-conflict #life

What I learned with Cecil Taylor was strategy and survival and how to resist temptations and resist getting discouraged. ↗

— Steve Lacy

#discouraged #getting #how #i #learned

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

#big #big enough #come #editor #enclosing

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

#before #command #conflict #demonstrated #disturbing