"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
— Mae West

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
— Mae West

"I can resist anything, except temptation."
— Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
— Oscar Wilde

"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

""What happens if I press this button?" -- "I WOULDN'T!"
*DING*
"Oh"
"What happened?"
"A light came on saying, please do not press this button again""
— Douglas Adams

"It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out."
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)

"I know that I will always be faced with temptation, but because I love you, I obey you, and I will follow you...."
— Rachel Joy Scott

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me."
— George Bernard Shaw (The Apple-cart: A Political Extravaganza)

"What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?"
— P.G. Wodehouse (Carry On, Jeeves)

"Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to."
— Martin Luther

"...Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out..."
— C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)

"There are two influences ever present in the world. One is constructive and elevating and comes from our Heavenly Father; the other is destructive and debasing and comes from Lucifer. We have our agency and make our own choice in life subject to these unseen powers. There is a division line well defined that separates the Lord's territory from Lucifer's. If we live on the Lord's side of the line Lucifer cannot come there to influence us, but if we cross the line into his territory we are in his power. By keeping the commandments of the Lord we are safe on His side of the line, but if we disobey His teachings we voluntarily cross into the zone of temptation and invite the destruction that is ever present there. Knowing this, how anxious we should always be to live on the Lord's side of the line.
[George Albert Smith, Improvement Era, May 1935, p. 278] Quoted in “Waiting Upon the Lord” By Henry B. Eyring, BYU Speeches, 30 Sept 1990
"
— George Albert Smith

"No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from. "
— George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)

"'You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.'

'Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip."
— W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)

"[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain?"
— Frank Harris (Oscar Wilde)

"Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare. "
— John Dryden

"Lead me not into temptation. I can find the way myself."
— Jane Seabrook (Furry Logic Laugh at Life)

"Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know them"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ"
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it ask for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world "
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"The question of why evil exists is not a theological question, for it assumes that it is possible to go behind the existence forced upon us as sinners. If we could answer it then we would not be sinners. We could make something else responsible...The theological question does not arise about the origin of evil but about the real overcoming of evil on the Cross; it asks for the forgiveness of guilt, for the reconciliation of the fallen world "
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Creation and Fall / Temptation: Two Biblical Studies)

"I can resist anything but temptation."
— Oscar Wilde

"Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.'

'That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.'"
— Alexander McCall Smith (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies)

"A silly idea is current that good people don’t know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings"
— Alfred De Musset (Lorenzaccio)

"Nothing can hurt you except sin; nothing can grieve me except sin; nothing can defeat you except sin. Therefore, be on your guard, my Mansoul."
— John Bunyan (The Holy War)

"I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin."
— Robert Louis Stevenson (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)

"I can resist anything but temptation."
— Oscar Wilde