William Butler Yeats Quotes

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

God tested Abraham. Temptation is not meant to make us fail; it is meant to confront us with a situation out of which we emerge stronger than we were. Temptation is not the penalty of manhood; it is the glory of manhood.

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

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.

We make ourselves a ladder out of our vices if we trample the vices themselves underfoot.

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself.

Every time I say 'no' to a small temptation, I strengthen my will to say 'no' to a greater one.

I struggle just like everybody else struggles. It's always a struggle in life to overcome temptation. I just try and get through it. No one is perfect.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.

Curiosity, rationalization, and laziness are no match against courage, self-control, and mental toughness.

By constant self-discipline and self-control you can develop greatness of character.

It's in the act of having to do things that you don't want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.

The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

The Divine wisdom has given us prayer, not as a means whereby to obtain the good things of earth, but as a means whereby we learn to do without them; not as a means whereby we escape evil, but as a means whereby we become strong to meet it.

It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution.

I have to say that the most important thing Scientology has given me is the ability to keep my integrity together.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.

Victorious living does not mean freedom from temptation, nor does it mean freedom from mistakes.

A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities

The great of heart is a gift of god. He who obeys his belly, obeys the enemy

The force of character is cumulative.