A Quote by C. S. Lewis

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

Quote Topics

About After Always Bad Bad People Badness Been Current Does Five Five Minutes Gives Giving Giving In Good Good People Hour How Idea Know Know How Later Lie Life Like Little Lived Man Means Minutes Obvious Only People Resist Sense Sheltered Silly Simply Strong Temptation Those Try Very Why Would

Quote Author

C. S. Lewis
British - Writer
November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. ... 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 also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.

C. S. Lewis

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

C. S. Lewis

If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

Larry McMurtry

We have a portion of our show where we ask everybody to get up and do the Temptation Walk. People 8 to 80 know how to do that Temptation Walk.

Dennis Edwards

All temptations can be handled easily when we know how, because no temptation is a temptation at all unless we are entertaining it.

Sterling W Sill

Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it.

Robert Green Ingersoll

I know of a number of people who are successfully earning to give. That isn't for everyone but for those with the ability to earn a lot of money and the character to resist the temptation to spend it on themselves, it can be a great way to do good.

Peter Singer

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.

Ross Douthat

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

Oscar Wilde

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.

Horace Mann

To appear to be on the inside and know more than others about what is going on is a great temptation for most people. It is a rare person who is willing to seem to know less than he does ... Somehow, people seem to feel that it is belittling to their importance not to know more than other people.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The difference between those whom the world esteems as good and those whom it condemns as bad, is in many cases little else than that the former have been better sheltered from temptation.

Augustus William Hare

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.

Fulton J. Sheen

We never know the quality of someone else's life, though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgement.

Tami Hoag

We often wonder that certain men and women are left by God to the commission of sins that shock us. We wonder how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to none. These men and women are those who have dallied with temptation--have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and have been weakened and corrupted by it.

J. G. Holland

Little sins carry with them but little temptations to sin, and then a man shews most viciousness and unkindness, when he sins on a little temptation. It is devilish to sin without a temptation; it is little less than devilish to sin on a little occasion. The less the temptation is to sin, the greater is that sin.

Thomas Brooks

A Quote by C. S. Lewis

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors