Quotes about Temptation

The Devil, it is true, is not exactly a doctor who has taken degrees, but he is very learned, very expert for all that. He has not been carrying on his business during thousands of years for nothing.

Son, as long as you live, Satan will use what you see and what you hear against you.

Even Believers can yield to the wrong spirits. Peter once rebuked Jesus, telling Him that He would not suffer.

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness.

God wants us to worry about our sins before we sin; the devil wants us to worry after we sin. God wants us to feel free after we repent (for we really are free then); the devil is a deceiver). The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil's friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us close to God is the devil's enemy and our friend.

It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can't refuse.

One of the reasons lust is bad (not the only reason) is that it makes you stupid. Like any addiction, it blinds your vision to everything else and focuses it on the one thing that is the object of your addiction.

One of the reasons lust is bad (not the only reason) is that it makes you stupid. Like any addiction, it blinds your vision to everything else and focuses it on the one thing that is the object of your addiction.

It is tempting to remain in the comfortable theater of the imagination instead of the real world, to fall in love with the idea of becoming a saint and loving God and neighbor instead of doing the actual work, because the idea makes no demands on you.

The perennial temptation is to creep under the angel's flaming sword, to try to create a heaven on earth.

The perennial temptation is to creep under the angel's flaming sword, to try to create a heaven on earth.

There is no such thing as an involuntary sin.