Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Temptation
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. The Pope. L. 1,185.
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.
Burns—Address to Unco Guid. St. 8.
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.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. I. Sec. II. Memb. 3. Subsect. XIII.
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. Ch. XLVII.
Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren.
Thou shalt abstain,
Renounce, refrain.
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.
Herrick—Hesperides. 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.
But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. III. L. 351.
Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back,
When gold and silver becks me to come on.
King John. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 12.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Makes ill deeds done!
King John. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 219.
Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 257.
I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross.
Measure for Measure. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 158.
Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.
Measure for Measure. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 181.
To beguile many and be beguil’d by one.
Othello. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 98.
Know’st thou not any whom corrupting gold
Would tempt unto a close exploit of death?
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 34.
Sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
Presuming on their changeful potency.
Troilus and Cressida. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 97.
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 South. Vol. 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?
Whittier—What the Voice Said.