top of page
"There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Temptation quotes

"She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell.Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it.And it's delicious."

"Temptation is stronger in the minds of people who are in doubt. Prayer makes it weaker."

"Be confidently assured that any 'gods' that we build will always have veracious appetites, and sooner or later they will gorge themselves on that which built them."

"Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again."

"Blake took a small roll from the tray on the table, then put it back in favor of a larger one. And maybe a little butter. It certainly couldn't hurt. And jam...no, he drew the line at jam. She was a spy, after all."

"Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint."

"If God offers the world for sale, how much will you pay for it? What is the price of your own destruction?"

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

"Everything Satan has to offer you is a collection of what Jesus rejected, it is the garbage bin of Jesus Christ. Matthew 4:1-17."

"Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we'll find it."
Explore more quotes by David McCullough

"With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that."

"My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader."

"The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?"

"When I read that the British army had landed thirty-two thousand troops - and I had realized, not very long before, that Philadelphia only had thirty thousand people in it - it practically lifted me out of my chair."
bottom of page