A Quote by Bertolt Brecht

Terrible is the temptation to be good. — © Bertolt Brecht
Terrible is the temptation to be good.
Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism!
Temptation to behave is terrible.
I'm no good at anything but comedy, which I think I'm good at. I'm absolutely no good at networking; I'm terrible at acting; I'm terrible at dealing with executives; I'm terrible at collaborating. And I say whatever I want to say. But I think I'm good enough at comedy that I can survive. And I don't really have an ambition for money.
You're either selfish, or you're a servant...but fundamentally selfish people are terrible friends, terrible lovers, terrible spouses, terrible Christians, terrible parents. They leave a terrible legacy. Will you be selfish? Will you be a servant?...A good marriage is a servant and a servant.
No one is so good that he is immune from temptation. We will never be entirely free from it. . . . There is no order so holy, no place so secret where there will be no temptation.
Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,' Sayna said. 'That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness.
I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy patriotism a little too far. For liberals the temptation is to say the purpose of politics is to straightforwardly bring the kingdom of God to Earth. For conservatives, I talk about Glenn Beck, the temptation is more apocalyptic and messianic, it's the temptation to say we did have a covenant with God, a literal covenant beginning with the Founding, and we are, like Israel in the Old Testament, falling away from it.
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.
Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad.
Time Management Tips: The perpetual processing of the same temptation is both dangerous and time-wasting. Cycling and recycling the same temptation (instead of rejecting such blandishment out of hand) is not only to risk one's soul, again and again, but is to bring on fatigue, so that the Adversary may be able to do indirectly what we will not let him do directly. A lack of decisiveness in dealing with temptation ties up our thought processes and prevents us from doing good with the time allotted to us.
It's easy to show terrible people's behavior on screen, and we all just kind of nod and go, 'Isn't that terrible.' It's more interesting when you can show terrible behavior in the interest of something good.
I didn't pretend that I was good at writing music, so I wrote terrible music, intentionally. As time went on, the terrible subsided, and I started getting good.
Each time you take a good picture, you have the wonderful feeling of exhilaration... and almost instantly, the flip side. You have this terrible, terrible anxiety that you've just taken your last good picture.
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.
When I do plays in New York and do eight shows a week, you have the same feeling. Three of them are terrible, four of them are okay and one is really good. It's hard to say what accounts for the really good one or for the terrible ones, but you end up trying to remanufacture whatever worked for the good one, like eating a tomato. I ate a tomato and the show was good, but that of course is not how it works.
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