Tempted Quotes
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Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must play, he who does not fear death on earth does not fear God.
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More Tempted Quotes
I have precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of civilized man, and if a war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be tempted to sympathise with the bears.
john muir— A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, ch.5,'Through Florida Swamps and Forests' (published1916).
We live in a highly competitive society, each of us trying to outdo the other in wealth, in popularity or social prestige, in dress, in scholastic grades or golf scores. [...] One is often tempted to say that conflict, rather than cooperation, is the great governing principle of human life.
s. i. hayakawa— p. 14 (The Pooling of Knowledge)
We use purpose-built technology and work with child safety organisations to find, remove and report it, because we never want this material to appear in our search results. We are working with experts on effective ways to deter anyone tempted to look for this sickening material.
— A Company Spokesman, quoted on BBC News, "Microsoft's Bing introduces child abuse search pop-ups", July 27, 2013.
Were we required to characterise this age of ours byany single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical,Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of the word.
thomas carlyle— 1829 Signs of the Times.
I lovethe House of Commonsso passionately that were I to be offered a peerage, I should be tempted to refuse it. Only tempted, of course.
Sir Henry Channon— Attributed.
There were reviews that were good, a good many that were mixed, and there were reviews that were bad, very bad, almost venomously spiteful, one might be tempted to say (and I am the one that might say it). 392
joseph heller— 1998 Recalling the critical reception to Catch-22. In Now and Then: A Memoir.
'In the beginning was the Word,' and you must not be tempted with a script just because you have a great part. You want a great role to play, but the whole - the whole - must be good. It'll never succeed if it's just the role you like.
bette davis— Louise Sweeney (December 28, 1987) "Bette Davis: On the heels of a new honor and a new film, a screen legend looks back over her 60-year career", Christian Science Monitor, p. 19.
Let's not be coy: you were hoping that I would satisfy all the desires you're too shy to name, or at least show you a good time. Now you hesitate, still holding on to me, but tempted to let me go.
michel faber— The Crimson Petal and the White, chapter 1 (2002)
I bought it for myself but never used it. I was tempted, but I never used it.
ted haggard— ABC News, accessed 4 November, 2006.
When I hear somebody sigh that "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
sydney j. harris— "Purely Personal Prejudices"
I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life.
alfred nobel— As quoted in Nobel, Dynamite and Peace (1929) by Ragnar Sohlman and Henrik Schück, as translated by Brian Lunn and Beatrix Lunn, p. 249; also quoted by Lester B. Pearson in his address on accepting the Nobel Peace Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway (10 December 1957)
Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared. This site is terrible! from, Allyson Stanley former miss America! ;)
frederick soddy— Louis Pauwels; and Jacques Berger, Morning of the Magicians, New York, New York, Avon Books, 1963, page 181
History gets thicker as it approaches recent times: more people, more events, and more books written about them. More evidence is preserved, often, one is tempted to say, too much. Decay and destruction have hardly begun their beneficent work.
a. j. p. taylor— English History 1914–1945 ([1965] 1975), "Revised Bibliography", p. 729
You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children , you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god .
leonard cohen— "Story of Isaac"
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
Denis Diderot— Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678.
There's one thing to be said for a remake of a 1984 movie that uses the original's screenplay. This 2011 version is so similar sometimes song for song and line for line that I was wickedly tempted to reprint my 1984 review, word for word. But That Would be Wrong.
roger ebert— Review of Footloose (12 October 2011)
Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.
Eric Hoffer— Section 28 (Reflections on the Human Condition (1973))
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom.
edgar allan poe— St. 8. (Ulalume (1847))
A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define “validity” as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects (it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people).
david riesman— “Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” p. 485
Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more influenced by distant causes than immediate ones. This would especially be true of overeducated people, who are capable of thinking past the immediate, of becoming obsessed by the remote. It's the old stuff, the conflicts we've never come to terms with, that sneaks up on us, half forgotten, insisting upon action.
richard russo— Ch. 2 (Straight Man (1997))
The general tendency to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted.
rebecca west— Chapter IX (The Thinking Reed (1936))
The apparent world goes through developments which are the same as those the logician goes through if he starts from Pure Being and travels on to the Absolute Idea... Why the world should go through this logical evolution is not clear; one is tempted to suppose that the Absolute Idea did not quite understand itself at first, and made mistakes when it tried to embody itself in events. But this, of course, was not what Hegel would have said.
— Bertrand Russell (1950) Unpopular Essays p. 74-75.
As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it.
— George Washington, in Congress on his appointment as Commander-in-Chief (June 16, 1775).
When tempted, the shortest and surest way is to act like a little child at the breast; when we show it a frightful monster, it shrinks back and buries its face in its mother's bosom, that it may no longer behold it.
françois fénelon— p. 578. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Let it be ours to be self-reliant amidst hosts of the vacillating real in a generation of triflers true amongst a multitude of shams; when tempted to swerve from principle, sturdy as an oak in its maintenance; when solicited by the enticement of sinners, firm as a rock in our denial.
— William Morley Punshon, p. 247. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
