Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, thou must never gratify it.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Terrible is the fight put up by the senses. Fight bravely! Conquer them you must.

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

I didn't realize it until I was grown how necessary it is for good people to be tough.

Temptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid.

Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.

Develop discipline of self so that you do not have to decide and re-decide what you will do when you are confronted with the same temptation time and time again. You need only decide some things once.

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

There are temptations which strong exercise best enables us to resist

No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.

...most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.

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

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?

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

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself.