Swami Sivananda Quotes

God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.

The best way to resist temptation is to avoid it. Prevention is far, far better than repentance.

It is easy enough to be virtuous When nothing tempts you to stray; When without or within No voice of sin Is luring your soul away. But it is only a negative virtue until it is tried by fire. For the soul that is worth the treasures of the earth is the soul that resists desire.

Reflect upon the defects of your character: thoroughly realize their evils and the transient pleasures they give you, and firmly will that you shall try your best not to yield to them the next time.

If we didn't have to stand against temptation, we'd never know our own spiritual strength.

Tomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin does not.

Virtue, which breaks through opposition and all temptation can remove, most shines, and most is acceptable above.

We usually know what we can do, but temptation shows us who we are.

The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil.

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

It is certain that, because the negligent do not struggle against self, they never achieve peace of soul or do so tardily, and never possess any virtue in its fullness, while the energetic and industrious make notable advances on both fronts.

You oughtn't to yield to temptation. Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd.

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

Virtue is a positive quality developed by taking a firm stand for the right in temptation, or by the suffering endured in consequence of wrongdoing.

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.

Avoiding the temptation to sin and being patient upon that, is greater than being patient whilst being afflicted with trials.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man.

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

If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil: his consent only makes it his. It is no sin to be tempted, but to be overcome.

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.

Sometimes it seems to me that all of life is a struggle to contain the natural impulses of the body and spirit, and that what we call character represents only the degree to which we are successful in this endeavor.

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

There is no point in praying for victory over temptation if we are not willing to make a commitment to say no to it.