Tempted Quotes
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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.
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More Tempted Quotes
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)
Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must play, he who does not fear death on earth does not fear God.
Nikos Kazantzakis— Odysseus, Book VIII, line 560
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.
For saints may do the same things by The spirit, in sincerity, Which other men are tempted to.
— 1664 Hudibras, pt.2, canto 2, l.235-7.
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.
Duties are ours; events are God's. This removes an infinite burden from the shoulders of a miserable, tempted, dying creature. On this consideration only, can he securely lay down his head, and close his eyes.
richard cecil— p. 197. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. The past is closed and limited; the future is open and free.
deepak chopra— The Path to Love: Spiritual Strategies for Healing, p. 170
'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)
Journalism is a good place for any writer to start — the retailing of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.
garrison keillor— "Post to the Host" (July 2005)
One is tempted to call them works of genius; they are quite Homeric in their internal unity, purity of phrasing, clear, ringing music of language and dramatic coloring.
james macpherson— Lin Carter Dragons, Elves, and Heroes (New York: Ballantine, 1971) p. 76.
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
It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, “Economics is what economists do,” and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.
kenneth boulding— p.97 (Economics As a Science, 1970)
My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices . I have flattered no ruling powers; I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.
lord byron— Letter to Thomas Moore (9 April 1814)
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.
I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist... I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.
duke of edinburgh philip— Foreword to If I Were an Animal (1987) by Fleur Cowles ISBN 9780688061500
It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.
Sylvia Plath— 1950
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
Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He had fasted forty days and forty nights.
Bible (NewTestament)— Matthew 4,1-2
I have never been inside those cellars. Our philosophy has always been not to look at such objects and get tempted. But of course I know what is inside them.
— Uthradam Thirunal Marthanda Varma, in reply to the query whether the cellars in the temple contained gold statues studded with rubies and diamonds, saphhires, gold coins of the Napoleonic era and the East India Company, in "The riches belong to nobody, certainly not to our family".
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).
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
Bible (NewTestament)— Matthew 4:1-3
The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say "Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles."
— Charles Evans Hughes, "Important Work of Uncle Sam's Lawyers", American Bar Association Journal (April 1931), p. 238, reprinting an address to the Federal Bar Association, Washington, D.C. (February 11, 1931), where the chief justice spoke of the "extraordinary development of administrative agencies of the government and of the lawyer's part in making them work satisfactorily and also in protecting the public against bureaucratic excesses", according to the article's subtitle.
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))
