#temptation

You will encounter many distractions and many temptations to put your goal aside: The security of a job, a wife who wants kids, whatever. But if you hang in there, always following your vision, I have no doubt you will succeed. ↗

— Larry Flynt

#aside #distractions #doubt #encounter #following

Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong." However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts. ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart. ↗

— Anonymous

#beauty #clichés #double-standards #drunkenness #gender

Beauty is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight,or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you...Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed...Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar...Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...The world belongs to you for a season...how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last. The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to...Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#life #temptations #world #youth #beauty

Temptation is the feeling we get when encountered by an opportunity to do what we innately know we shouldn't. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#inspirational #life #opportunity-temptation #temptation #inspirational

Oh, God, I would give anything to change the past,” he gasped. “To make it so that the last thing you saw was not me walking away from you. In your memories I am forever one and twenty, and cocky, and sneering, and looking self-righteous. And I’ve changed, Beth,” he gasped, choking on a sob he could not hide. “I want so damn much for you to see how I’ve changed. To see me now. There are no lies in my eyes. No motives other than to show you that I am not the callous man I was. And that I love you…. I love you so damn much.” He was crying. The tears trickled unchecked down his cheeks, dripping onto his lips. She touched them, wiped them away, which only caused them to spill faster and harder. ↗

— Charlotte Featherstone

#iain #temptation-and-twilight #change

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

#temptation #life

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 ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#johannes #love #poetry #seducer-s-diary #seduction

You've become my friend, and I love you." It was right and true and that made saying it easy. She heard the surprise in the intake of his breath. "And I, you, Helen. I think I've loved you since the moment you first stood on my doorstep." He paused. "But now, I really must insist that you sleep. My love will still be here when you wake up. ↗

— Michelle Zink

#griffin #griffin-and-helen #griffin-channing #helen #helen-cartwright

With every morn my life afresh must break The crust of self, gathered about me fresh; That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh The spider-devils spin out of the flesh- Eager to net the soul before it wake, That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake. George MacDonald ↗

— George MacDonald

#religious #sin #temptation #the-fall #theology

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

#before #broad #case #judges #need