John Owen Quotes

Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.

Nations like individuals, when driven to choose between desperate courses, might at times be compelled to take the chance of destruction, often destroying themselves or suffering irreparable harm.

Temptations, unlike opportunities, will always give you many second chances.

I believe there's things all around us that make you do good things and some that make you do bad things.

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.

You know sometimes you're in a position of risk and you feel that you can turn good or bad.

Gollum is entirely based on the notion of addiction. The way that the ring pervades him, makes him craving, lustful, depletes him physically, psychologically and mentally.

Just being aware of what you are about to do greatly diminishes the tendency to do what you don't want to. You will pull your hand back from that pizza slice, tell the waitress that you are passing on dessert, put on your gym shoes instead of going under the comforter, and take several deep breaths instead of screaming at your daughter.

Live or die, but don't poison everything.

We have a demon, we have an angel inside, within our souls, and you just play with it, and sometimes the evil part of you wins the battle, in a very important decision, or in a bedtime, with your lover. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

And that's what I liked about it, because they are, in the beginning, your little beautiful stock figures, who then make a decision to preserve their futures, but the decision they make isn't completely right, and it destroys their futures.

The more freedom you give people to do good, the more freedom they have to do bad as well.

Life's full of opportunities to make crappy decisions that feel good. And after the first one, the rest get a whole lot easier.

You can have your cake and eat it. But my God, it will go rotten inside you.

If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat. ~Val

There were times when I was tempted to do wrong, and could have went that way. But I knew it wasn't for me. I was told enough times that it catches up with you, and I believe it.

No temptation, no pressure, no enticing can overcome us unless we allow such. If we make the wrong choice, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Self-restraint may be alien to the human temperament, but humanity without restraint will dig its own grave.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.

The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.

I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.

Each decision - to kill, to sign a petition, to write a letter, to make a speech, to attack, to lie, to surrender - was made at some point in somebody's day.

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

Guilt is to danger, what fire is to gunpowder; a man need not fear to walk among many barrels of powder, if he have no fire about him.