"Tempter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in some shape or other of temptation to sin. But take the strongest and most pressing incitements to the corruptions of the heart, and the evil of our nature. Even of these must it not be said, that the temptation, and the tempter himself, may be turned into a worker for good, when that promise is brought forward, and brought home to the heart, "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able, but will ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... am," was the answer. "I think he's been on his last spree. And he wouldn't have gone on this one only that he was tempted by some person. Put this tempter out of the way, and it will mean Ham's safety. ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... of the world,—to understand them, as few men did, by his poet's soul,—through love, or color, or music, or keen healthy pain. Very many openings for him to know God through the mask of matter. He had shut them; being a Calvinist, and a dyspeptic, (Dyspepsia is twin-tempter with Satan, you know,) sold his God-given birthright, like Esau, for a hungry, bitter mess of man's doctrine. He came to loathe the world, the abode of sin; loathed himself, the chief of sinners; mapped out a heaven in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a mortal foe, and stamped his foot as he hissed through his clenched teeth, "I will be free." Ah, Richard! don't begin to boast before you have gained the victory, depend more upon God than self, you surely need his aid, for here comes a tempter. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... his legs and leaned toward his tempter. "Monsieur, if you are not jesting, then you are a madman. Who are you? What do I know about you? I never saw you before, and for two seasons I have driven mademoiselle in Paris. She wears beautiful jewels to-night. How do I know that you are ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... ashamed of this only, if reason shall not wholly free me from the servitude of care. Let others boast of material goods; mine is the privilege of not needing these or stooping to their control. I will have but a temperate desire of things open to choice, as they are good and present, and the tempter shall find no hold for his hands by which to draw me astray. I will be content with any sojourn or any company, for there is none, howsoever perilous, which may not prove and strengthen the defences of my soul. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... The tempter said his say, Which pierced him like a needle— He summoned straight away His sexton and ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... "Ayaunt, tempter!" cried Ananda, hurling the phial indignantly away. "I defy thee! and will have recourse to my old ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... persuade himself that the typhus was indeed ebbing. For himself, as the price of silence, there was easy sailing under the flag of local patriotism, and with every success in prospect. Yet it was with sunken eyes that he turned to the tempter. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... time to the dance. The sight to the warder seems wondrously queer, When the villainous Tempter ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... senceless false lewd spirit, maister of devils, miserable creature, tempter of men, deceaver of bad angels, captaine of heretiques, father of lyes, fatuous bestial ninnie, drunkard, infernal theefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger-bitten impure sow, seely beast, truculent beast, cruel beast, bloody beast, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... imprisonment,—in spite of the heavy shadow that must fall on him, while death is walking by his side. What bribe could Satan offer, rich enough to tempt and overcome this mail? Alas! it may have been in the very strength of his high and searching intellect, that the Tempter found the weakness which betrayed him. He yearned for knowledge he went groping onward into a world of mystery; at first, as the witnesses have sworn, he summoned up the ghosts of his two dead wives, and talked with them of matters beyond the grave; and, when ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rule his duchy, and Normandy was again the scene of fightings and plunderings which he made no effort to suppress. Flambard, having escaped from prison, fled to Normandy, and urged Robert to claim England as the heritage of the eldest son of the Conqueror. Robert listened to the tempter and sailed for England. When he landed at Porchester he found that the Church and the English had rallied to Henry. Robert's position was hopeless, and he made a treaty with his brother, abandoning all claim to ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... wickness fanned into flame by which means I have no opportunity of knowing—in how many frailty and folly may have blossomed into falsehood it is for those concerned to estimate. There is one thing, however, certain—operating in this way is more degrading to the tempter than to the tempted; and the government owes it to itself to put an end to a course of tactics pursued in its name, which in the results can only bring its humiliation—the public are bound in self-protection to protect the prisoner ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... when just leaving the hands of God, his nature was then not perfect! Why did God permit him to sin, and his nature to become corrupt? Why did God allow him to be seduced, knowing well that he would be too weak to resist the tempter? Why did God create a Satan, a malicious spirit, a tempter? Why did not God, who was so desirous of doing good to mankind, why did He not annihilate, once for all, so many evil genii whose nature rendered them enemies of our happiness? Or rather, why did God create evil spirits, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... had his encounters with the tempter. One day the devil transformed himself into a little blackbird, which fluttered about him, and sang so sweetly that he was nearly drawn away from his devotions and led into sin. By a higher power than his own he overcame ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the weaker or stronger He blames the most, The tempter or tempted a tithe of His tender compassion claims, Whether the selfish or too unselfish, those who through love or lust are lost, He in His infinite wisdom and ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... was small, and the Captain's eyes began to fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type, and a candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leaned his elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his forehead,—tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and force his whole soul ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the basket, she noticed a pretty pink printed frock lying on the top, which looked as if it would exactly fit her. How nice it would be, she thought, if she had such a frock to wear to the picnic! Then came one of the evil suggestions which the tempter is so ready to put into the heart: what if she should keep it till the picnic was over, and wear it just that once? She could hide it, and put it on somewhere out of her stepmother's sight; and then, perhaps, if she ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... Tempter, he who is Ruler of that heaven, where pleasures are collected, hath sworn unto the Lord to shield him from temptation ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... or wife. You shall not read unnecessarily an episode of sin and bitter sorrow, and of shame that was not less heavy to bear because the eyes of the world were blinded and saw it not. It is enough to say that the blood of Emily Carlyle was as certainly on her tempter's head as that of any one of those whom he had slain in open fight with shot or steel. This is what she answered when he asked her to forgive him: "My own, I have forgiven you long ago! I could not help it if I would. I can not reproach you either, for though I have tried hard to repent, I fear, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... in the human heart, crushed by the tempter, Feelings lie buried that grace can restore; Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, Chords that were broken will ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... life. As my hand stole mechanically down to caress it, it crept upon my knees and licked my face, as if it meant to tell me that there was one who understood; that I was not alone. And the love of the faithful little beast thawed the icicles in my heart. I picked it up in my arms and fled from the tempter; fled to where there were lights and men moving, if they cared less for me than I for them—anywhere so that I saw and heard the river no more. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... tree is formed by the twisted legs and the ribs of a skeleton, from the head and the outstretched arms of which spring the branches and the foliage. It is worthy of remark, that many painters, the greatest of them (Raphael) at their head, have represented the tempter of Eden as a beautiful woman, whose body terminates in a serpent. It was a mistake on their part to do so. They knew how much of the Devil a woman might have in her, and how irresistible a temptress she is; but they forgot, that, on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... if she were shaking off the influence of the tempter, "I must not listen to you. Yet you don't seem to think that it costs me anything to ask you to bid me good-bye once and for all. It should be less to you than to me. A girl thinks of these things more than a man—she has little else to think of; he goes out into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... and of choice insisted upon. And, be it said reverently, no man ever had a stiffer fight to keep true to his purpose than He. He was tempted in all points like as we are. He was tempted more than we. The tempter did his best and worst; he mustered all his cunning and driving power against this Lone Man. And the temptations were real. I am not concerned over the merely academical questions of the schoolmen here. The practical side is the intense side that takes all ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... your adorable Redeemer, stooping from His Throne, and saying, "I have overcome the world." He came forth unscathed from its snares. With the same heavenly weapon He bids you wield, three times did he repel the Tempter, saying, "It is written."—Is it some crushing trial, or overwhelming grief? He is "acquainted with grief." He, the mighty Vine, knows the minutest fibres of sorrow in the branches; when the pruning knife touches them, it touches Him. "He has gone," says a tried sufferer, ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... I will keep my promise at all costs," sighed Treherne, and with a gesture full of pathetic patience he waved the fair tempter from him, saying steadily, "I will never tell you, though you rob me of that which is dearer than my life. Go and work your will, but remember that when you might have won the deepest gratitude of the man you profess to love, you chose ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... live like a gentleman and lady. There was plenty of everything and everything was fine.... But honest folk shook their heads when they marked their way of living. "From the Devil no good can come," they unanimously agreed. "Whence, except from the tempter of orthodox people, came this wealth? Where else could he have got such a lot of gold from? Why, on the very day that he got rich, did Basavriuk vanish as if into ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "I disbelieve you, tempter!" cried Surrey indignantly. "Wyat is too good a Christian, and too worthy a knight, to league with ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... how hot it can be in May when it has a mind to, was the year I got to learn something of the Paris suburbs. The joyous expedition which ended our every day that year was so in the spirit of Harland that I should be inclined to look upon him as the tempter, had we not, with the usual amiability of the tempted, met him more than half way. Still, he excelled us all in the knack of collecting us from our work, no matter how it had scattered us or in what ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... any thing in which the soul of Tony delighted, it was an apple pasty of any shape or dimensions; and the tempter had ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... having nought to do, Was pleased to let the magnet wheedle, Till closer still the tempter drew, And off at length ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is thorn of lance;[FN385] * Who dareth pluck it, rashest chevisance? Stretch not thy hand towards it, for night long * Those lances marred because we snatched a glance! Say her, who tyrant is and tempter too * (Though justice might her tempting power enhance):— Thy face would add to errors were it veiled; * Unveiled I see its guard hath best of chance! Eye cannot look upon Sol's naked face; * But can, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... institution of six vestals; [94] but the primitive church was filled with a great number of persons of either sex, who had devoted themselves to the profession of perpetual chastity. [95] A few of these, among whom we may reckon the learned Origen, judged it the most prudent to disarm the tempter. [96] Some were insensible and some were invincible against the assaults of the flesh. Disdaining an ignominious flight, the virgins of the warm climate of Africa encountered the enemy in the closest engagement; they permitted priests and deacons to share their bed, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... asks him whether, considering the circumstances, he does not consider it a duty to violate his promise to Count Bismarck, and to hand over his newspapers to the Government. In this way, thinks this tempter, the debt which America owes to France for aiding her during her revolution will be repaid. "We gave you Lafayette and Rochambeau, in return we only ask for one copy of an English paper." The anxiety for news is weighing ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... some art by which I could break the charm of the tempter's bowl, and with mailed hand lift out the long serpent of eternal despair, and shake out its coils, and cast it down, and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... obtain my custom for them—"tips" which he pocketed in his usual reserved and discreet manner, but which he was always honest enough to tell me of afterward. He would most faithfully give me the name and address of this or that particular tempter of his fidelity, always adding—"As to whether the rascal sells good things or bad our Lady only knows, but truly he gave me thirty francs to secure your excellency's good-will. Though for all that ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... proper warrant in Government affairs, an unscrupulous dealer in threats and promises amongst public men, a constant menace to sworn servants of the people in their offices of trust, a tempter of the corrupt and a terror to the timid who are delegated to power a remorseless enemy to wholesome legislation, a constant friend to conspirators against the common welfare for private gain—if such a compound of dangerous and insolent qualities merged in one personality, active, vigilant, ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore
... was not an ignorant girl, inexperienced in the ways of the world. She knew how to take care of herself. Why not destroy the letter and just keep silence? She had really no responsibility in this matter. Beryl was only an acquaintance who had tried to harm her happiness. And then the tempter suggested to her that by taking any action she must inevitably injure her own life. He brought to her mind thoughts of Craven. If she let Beryl alone the fascination of Arabian might work upon the girl so effectually that Craven would mean nothing to her any more; but if ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... upon the face of the hunchback with an expression of gaping terror, as if he stood in the presence of the Arch Tempter himself. Then he caught him by the throat, and shook ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... palace, of such exceeding beauty and grace that none saw her but to love her, yet of such sweetness and humility as passed all comparison; and how, when a heathen prince would have espoused her to his son, she said, "Away from me, tempter! for I am betrothed to a lover who is greater and fairer than any earthly suitor,—he is so fair that the sun and moon are ravished by his beauty, so mighty that the angels of heaven are his servants"; how she bore meekly with persecutions and threatenings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... love: O GOD! even still I hear the Tempter's voice, Which whispered the thought in my mind, to fill My page of crime with a deed of ill That made ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... The tempter was gone; Florence was left alone, her head reeling with pain, her heart aching within her bosom. Jameson's last words had fallen upon her heart like fire; what if this refusal to share his fate had confirmed him ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... who blow on knots (i.e. witches) and from the mischief of the envier, whenas he envieth.'" Chapter cxiv.—"In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful! Say [quoth Gabriel] 'I take refuge with the Lord of Men, the King of Men, the God of Men, from the mischief of the stealthy Tempter (i.e. the devil) who whispereth (i.e. insinuateth evil) into the breasts (hearts) of mankind, from Jinn and men!'" These two chapters are often written on parchment etc. and worn as an amulet about the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... reproach that they have endured so much and so long, and have deferred this act of self-defense until to-day." Mr. Clay's speech was insulting and exasperating to the last degree. His colleague, Mr. Fitzpatrick, a man of better tempter, showed reserve and an indisposition to discuss the situation. He contented himself with the expression of a general concurrence in the views of Mr. Clay, adding no word of bitterness himself. He said that he "acknowledged loyalty to no other power than to the sovereign State ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to the eloquent imp. Once to nearly every man comes an hour when he stands on a high mount and is shown the kingdom of his desire, to be his if he will—at a price. There David stood that evening. And he fell. He listened and looked too long. He did not haggle with his tempter over the price but agreed to pay, if only he might have his ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... must endure the scoffs and reproaches of his former companions. Added to these was the awful tug of the habits and inclinations of his present life, and beyond all this was the personal temptation of the evil one whispering in his soul not to yield. If he did yield, said the tempter, he would soon fall away, and that would be worse than not to ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his wife, when he has exultingly shown her the money, and she has asked him how he got it—'I found it;' and the other to his old companion and tempter, when he charged him with having killed that traveler, and he suddenly went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 'It wasn't I who murdered him—it was misery!' And such a dress! such a face! and, above all, such an extraordinarily guilty, wicked thing as he made of a knotted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... The tempter stood by him, too,—blinded by furious, despotic will,—every moment pressing him to shun that agony by the betrayal of the innocent. But the brave, true heart was firm on the Eternal Rock. Like his Master, he knew that, if he saved others, himself ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... held no parley with their consciences, or with the tempter; they did not even think of it. On the contrary, they were glad, every one, that the way was made so plain and so easy to them. Each of them had friends whom they especially desired to have know of the recent and great change that had come to their lives. With some of these friends they shrank ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... my brother Battista, now at discipline in his cell. The flesh, which he should have tamed, has raised, it appears, a bruised head for one last spite. My brother was bitten, and my brother fell into sin. Whether, as of old, the tempter was the woman, it is sure that, as of old, the eater was a man. I will not condemn you unheard, lest I incur reproach in my turn. But our order is in peril; the enemy is abroad, with Envy, Hatred, and Malice barking on their leashes. What can the poor sheep ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... woman. Clara was so agitated by this influence, that for the moment she seemed to herself to know no man in the world but Coronado. Even while she tried to remember Thurstane, he vanished as if expelled by some enchantment, and left her alone in life with her tempter. Still she could not or would not answer; though she trembled, she ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... great the divergence was. It was so great and the defilement so complete that he despaired of the possibility of getting cleansed. "Have you not tried before to perfect yourself and become better, and nothing has come of it?" whispered the voice of the tempter within. "What is the use of trying any more? Are you the only one?—All are alike, such is life," whispered the voice. But the free spiritual being, which alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, had already awakened in Nekhludoff, and he could ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... discharged at the flying Cowboys, and a spent bullet broke a pane of glass within a few feet of Caesar. Imitating the posture of the great tempter of our race, the black sought the protection of the inside of the building, and immediately ascended to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... they held it with tempting smiles toward Marion. She was very pale, though more composed, and her hand shook not, as smiling back, she gratefully accepted the crystal tempter and raised it to her lips. But scarcely had she done so when every hand was arrested by her piercing exclamation of "Oh, how terrible!" "What is it?" cried one and all, thronging together, for she had slowly carried the glass at arm's length, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... would have offered her half my fortune. But circumstances were altered. I was no longer in the panic of despair. The lesson I had received from Tom Brice was fresh in my mind, and my profound distrust of her was uppermost. I saw before me only a tempter ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... unpoetical glimpses from the river, in passing and repassing. The chimneys are twisted in the most approved style of the Dutch Brabant, and, although wanting the stork's nests on their summits, it seems as if there might be that woman's tempter, comfort, around the hearths beneath. The offices, too, have an enticing air, for ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... told the lad to drive the pigs into a pond close by. Joseph, nothing loath, set to work with a will, delighted with the fun. The woman, to whom the pigs belonged, came out presently, broom in hand, flourishing it over the young sinner's head. The tempter was standing by, and sought to cover his share of the transaction by shaking his ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... yielded. Life or death; honour, disgrace. His mistress restored; his innocence proved. Life, with him, had scarcely been tasted. A glorious career awaited him; his lady-love smiling through the bright vista of the future; and——The tempter prevailed! ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... soul—set, in her exulting imagination no lower than the angels, and beheld in the end,—with besmirched brow and debased mien, a disgraced sensualist, not merely a deceiver of another woman's innocent confidence, and her tempter to dishonor and wretchedness, but a poltroon—a whipped coward who had not dared to lift voice or pen in denial or extenuation ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... will often go wrong in her strenuous course; will often alarm, sometimes provoke; will now and then work mischief and even perhaps grievous harm; but she will be our own Eve after all; the sweet-speaking tempter whom heaven created to be the joy and the trouble of this pleasing anxious existence; to shame us away from the hiding-places of a slothful neutrality, and lead us abroad in the world, men militant here on earth, enduring quiet, content with strife, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... the tempter me pursu'th With the sins of all my youth, And half damns me with untruth, Sweet Spirit, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... under this course of provocation. The greatness of temptation does by no means release men from obligation; but Christians are bound to remember that it is a certain consequence of throwing men into strong excitement, that they will act unwisely and wrong, and that the tempter as well as the tempted are held responsible, both by God and man. In all these cases, it cannot but appear that the good aimed at might have been accomplished in a quiet, peaceable, and christian way, and that this was not the way ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... period of our history. What have been the results? Has crime declined in proportion to the spread of education? Are the best instructed classes the least vicious? Has eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge diminished the power of the Tempter? So far from it, the consequences, hitherto at least, have been melancholy and foreboding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... who knew other than owls and owlets, knew the tempter in that form. Faustus was not your man for fancies and figments; and he tells us that, to his certain knowledge, it was verily an owl's face that whispered so much mischief in the ear ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... thoughts and feelings heretofore unknown, And homes of wealth and beauty, wit and mirth, By taste refined, by eloquence and worth, Taught and diffused the intellect's high joy, And gladly welcomed e'en a rustic boy; Or when ambition's lip of flame and fear Burned like the tempter's to my listening ear, And a proud spirit, hidden deep and long, Rose up for strife, stern, resolute, and strong, Eager for toil, and proudly looking up To higher levels for the ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... inland lived a baker, who gave them a loaf of bread every week. The child was sent for it when Maren was ill in bed. Ditte was hungry, and this was a great temptation, so she always ran the whole way home to keep the tempter at bay; when she succeeded in bringing the bread back untouched, she and her Granny were equally proud. But it sometimes happened that the pangs of hunger were too strong, and she would tear out the crump from the side of the warm bread as she ran. It was not meant to be ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... days she had not tasted food. Her child was sick. She had begged a few crumbs for him, but even he had eaten nothing all day. Then the tempter came, and—why need I say it?—she sinned. Turn not away from her, O you, her sister, who have never known a want or felt a woe! Turn not away. It was not for herself; she would have died—gladly have died! It was for her sick, starving child that she did it. Could she, should she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... time may come when you Shall miss a mother's tender care, A sinfu' world to wander through, Wi' a' its stormy strife to share; Then mind my words, whare'er ye gang, Let fortune smile or thrawart be, Ne'er let the tempter lead ye wrang— If sae ye live, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the depraved state of society in this city," said Guly, earnestly, "when woman, who should be the first to frown upon and discountenance such practices, not only is the tempter, but the hearty partaker of them. I am certain if the other sex were more strict—would positively refuse to attend places of amusement on Sabbath evenings, would refrain utterly from drinking wine themselves, and offering it to others—there would be a great change ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... in sorrow's hour When life seems dark and drear; I'll shield thee from the tempter's power; Dear ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... finally coming to look upon herself as a simple-minded girl, ignorant of the world and of life, and conscious only of her boundless love for this one glorious man, and to whom the memories of a less harmless past seemed like wicked dreams sent by the Tempter to molest her chastity. This self-deception, or rather retrogression of her instincts, led her into touches of mysticism. The story of little Sonia who had fallen in love with the ten-year-old Wilhelm at first sight, to die shortly afterward with ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... reason of incompetency, I have avoided the topics of chief present interest in America, including that proposal to tamper with the true monetary creed which (as we should say) the Tempter lately presented to the Nation in the Silver Bill. But I will not close this paper without recording my conviction that the great acts, and the great forbearances, which immediately followed the close of the Civil War form a group which will ever be a noble object, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... painful and revolting secret, in his heart, and he feared lest something should betray its existence to his wife. What would he not have given at the moment to have blotted out for ever the memory of thoughts too earnestly cherished on the evening before, when he was alone with the tempter? ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... street know this weakness of New York merchants. They take the pains to inform themselves as to the character, means and credulity of merchants, and then use every art to draw them into speculations, in which the tempter is enriched and the tempted ruined. In nine cases out of ten a merchant is utterly ignorant of the nature of the speculation he engages in. He is not capable of forming a reasonable opinion as to its propriety or chance of success, because ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... francs!" said Ste. Marie, unnecessarily, and the old man licked his withered lips. The tempter said: "My good Michel, would you care to receive ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... was buried in baptism; the Spirit descended upon him; he heard the encouragement of that voice which proclaimed his Sonship to the Most High, and in the enjoyment of that holy time he came up from the river. Then came the tempter; in the strength of the spirit of the baptism, he resisted the temptation, and was victorious over all its forms. So with the object and mission of our Sabbath schools. You are led to the river of divine truth, that you may be baptized in its pure waters. ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... (the blackness of this man's heart revolted me). "There is no seductive shape that the tempter does not assume, my child. Wit in itself is not to be condemned, although the Church shuns it as far as she is concerned, looking upon it as a worldly ornament; but it may become dangerous, it may be reckoned ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... part," remarked the tempter, "I do not care about doing things by halves. If I want to enjoy myself that way, I should prefer to go in my carriage, sit in my own box, and do the thing comfortably. Everything or nothing; that is ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... in an unfavorable light, and as prevailing among the lower class of people. The truth is, the custom prevails among all classes, to the great honor of the country, its religion, and ladies. The virtuous may be tempted; but the tempter is despised. Why it should be thought incredible for a young man and young woman innocently and virtuously to lie down together in a bed with a great part of their clothes on, I cannot conceive. Human passions may be alike in every region; but religion, diversified as it is, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... is by nature ever inclined to tempt man; hence a man should not sit in a secluded place even with his nearest female relative." Woman, accordingly, is, according to the Hindoo as well as the Old Testament and Christian view, everywhere the tempter. All masterhood implies the degradation of the mastered. The subordinate position of woman continues, to this day, even more in force in the backward civilization of the East than among the nations that enjoy a so-called Christian view-point. That which, in the so-called Christian ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... is "a young man fair of favour and formous of figure," which is more appropriate to a "Tempter." He also wears light stuffs ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... meet my tempter alone. The engagement has been foreseen by my Lord. "Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you!" The tempter's plots, and wiles, and ambuscades are all clearly perceived. My Lord has got the enemy's maps, and his plan of campaign, for all things are open to the eyes of Him with whom ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and weeks it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last, on that supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became the Tempter whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid the fragrance of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which told of the weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... girl would be saved. Would Gowan think of it?... Of course he would think of it. But he would not do it. He would leave the deed to be done by the man to whom he had relinquished Miss Chuckie. It was for that man to save her—to destroy the tempter and break the spell of fascination that was drawing her over the brink of a pit far deeper than any earthly canyon. He, Lafayette Ashton—not Gowan—was the man. He must save her—down there in the depths, where ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... many a sin committed, because the favor of women is a grace that does honor to every man, and that flatters him even when it is bestowed by the unloved and unworthy. For flattery is a key to the heart, and when the heart stands half open the voice of the tempter is never wanting to whisper: "You will hurt her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which he never ceased to practise, or to try to practise, which never did him the least good, and which not unfrequently lost him much of the not too abundant gains which he earned with such enormous labor. This was the "game of speculation." His sister puts the tempter's part on an unknown "neighbor," who advised him to try to procure independence by une bonne speculation. Those who have read Balzac's books and his letters will hardly think that he required much tempting. He began by trying ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... in 1830. Then, more than ever, his deep consciousness of the invisible world became evident; then, more than ever, he seemed to be battling with the wicked one. For his sermons ran on the eternal themes of the darkness of evil, the craft of the tempter, the punishment of obliquity, and he justified the persistence with which he dwelt upon these painful subjects by an appeal to a general principle: 'The spirit of Elijah,' he said, 'must ever ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Judy and Tiny Armstrong had seized her, set her up on their shoulders, and were carrying her around the room, while the building fairly rocked with applause. Thrilled and intoxicated by the cheering, Agony began to listen to the voice of the tempter in her bosom. No one would ever know that it had not really been she who had done the brave deed; not a soul knew of her lending her suit to Mary because of the mishap in the springhouse. Mary Sylvester was gone; was on her way to Japan; she would never hear ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... replenish it now," observed Hugh, stepping to the door of the room, and giving orders accordingly. "A meeting between old friends should never be dry. But for the partnership, it is a matter in which you must excuse me. Heaven knows I find it hard enough to be honest, with no tempter but the Devil and my own thoughts; and, if I have you also to contend with, there is ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and seat him on his throne; Then smilling thus: "To this divine abode, "The seat of saints, of seraphs, and of God, "Thrice welcome thou." The raptur'd babe replies, "Thanks to my God, who snatch'd me to the skies, "E'er vice triumphant had possess'd my heart, "E'er yet the tempter had beguil d my heart, "E'er yet on sin's base actions I was bent, "E'er yet I knew temptation's dire intent; "E'er yet the lash for horrid crimes I felt, "E'er vanity had led my way to guilt, "But, soon arriv'd at my celestial goal, "Full glories rush on my expanding soul." Joyful he spoke: ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... Monthault, "would you stay at Oxford, like a tame lion in a chain, caressed by old women, and wondered at by spectacled fellows of colleges." Eustace paused. "I see, my brave fellow," resumed the tempter, "you are determined to be one of us. I know your heart, and can predict that the consciousness of positive disobedience will make you miserable. Go, then, in the hope that your uncle would not have restrained you. Are you not old enough to judge for yourself? They have permitted ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... You could not have imagined that you could ever go to jail if you had stolen every horse in my stable—and everything else I have? Don't give another thought to the matter. It was a harmless bit of fun that hurt nobody. As to Molly's fibbing—I was the tempter. What was the child to do? I think all the more of her for standing between you and ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... was to exchange the honors of old age for the vicissitudes of a renewed existence! Had nature taken her course, I should probably now be sleeping in a quiet grave—and my soul might be in the regions of the blessed. But the tempter came, and dazzled me with prospects of endless happiness—and I succumbed! Oh! Faust! would that thou hadst never crossed the threshold of my humble cottage in the Black Forest! How much sorrow—how much misery should I have been spared! Better—better ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... a low ebb, truly, if he counts on Injin friendship because he has sold fire-water to the young men!" answered le Bourdon, with a nice understanding of not only Indian nature, but of human nature. "We may like the sin, Margery, while we detest the tempter. I have never yet met with the man, pale-face or red-skin, who did not curse, in his sober moments, the hand that fed ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... spirit of lawlessness was strong within me in those days, so that I hearkened to the voice of Skegson, the tempter, and he lured my feet from the paths that led to virtue and Sadler's Wells, and we wandered into the broad and crowded ways that branch off from the ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... to do what is fair. The tempter's advice is to get even now for the injury that has been done. But a nobler voice bids me to rise above such a feeling and do nothing in the spirit of revenge, but merely for ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... judgment of German statesmen have the furthest reaching consequences on the war, were also the object of their unwearied attentions. And every motive which could appeal to the interest or sway the sentiment of those peoples was set before them in the light most conducive to the aims of the tempter. Those painstaking efforts were duly rewarded. Bulgaria, before abandoning her neutrality, had contributed more effectively even than Turkey to retard the Allies' progress and to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... think Blanche would make a good wife for a petty country gentleman? Do you think I should become the character very well, Laura?" Pen asked. "Remember temptation walks about the hedgerows as well as the city streets: and idleness is the greatest tempter of all." ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ne'er would wrong a guiltless foe; Yet if a fault were proved, each one Would punish e'en his own dear son. But there and in the kingdom's bound No thief or man impure was found: None of loose life or evil fame, No tempter of another's dame. Contented with their lot each caste Calm days in blissful quiet passed; And, all in fitting tasks employed, Country and town deep rest enjoyed, With these wise lords around his throne The ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... So the tempter whispers. Richard Wardour tries his strength on the boat. It moves: he has got it under control. He stops, and looks round. Beyond him is the open sea. Beneath him is the man who has robbed him of Clara. The shadow of the deadly thought grows ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... faithful when sorely tried. But Samson was weak as water, he had no strength of soul; a woman's pretty face, a woman's coaxing word, was quite sufficient to overthrow all the strength of soul he possessed. He could resist no temptation that came across his path; he was an easy prey to the tempter. ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... bedrummed and betrumpeted man of genius cannot read the A B ab of the human emotions. 'Here!' says the subtle tempter, 'I'll give you twopence if you'll put your baby on the fire!' The god-like hero thunders: 'No! He is my flesh and blood. He is the sacred trust of Heaven. He is innocent, he is helpless. I'll show you to the door!' Oh! what emotions stir ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... with Himself. What had become of us had He listened to the tempter in the wilderness, or failed to accept the cup in the Garden of Gethsemane! How much we have the happiness of Christ in our hands! Alas! that His should be a sorrowful ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... some faith, "Oh, I think I am!" Immediately the word was given me to confirm my faith. "Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." And I took hold—true, with a trembling hand, and not unmolested by the tempter, but I held fast the beginning of my confidence, and it grew stronger, and from that moment I have dared to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... the past that one must cling if one would avoid the pitfalls which evil imaginations create. All those fine novelties, those mirages of that famous so-called progress, are simply traps and snares of the eternal tempter, causes of perdition and death. Why seek any further, why constantly incur the risk of error, when for eighteen hundred years the truth has been known? Truth! why it is in Apostolic and Roman Catholicism as created by a long succession of generations! What madness to desire to change it when ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... suppose, a naturally restless mind and busy imagination, this soon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately, my brothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore, a Calvinistic governess, finding it out, lectured me severely and told me it was wicked. From that time forth, I considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin. . . . ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... a pleasant step to take. Many have taken that step; but few have persevered in their onward march. The step which costs the sacrifice is that which crosses the threshold when the door has been arrived at. For on one side stands that powerful tempter, human respect, whose baneful influence has sent back hundreds, perhaps thousands, into the dreary waste. On the other side stands ambition, with noble and captivating mien. I need not speculate here as to what ambition may say ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... which numbers more followers than any other faith. It is five hundred years older than Christianity. It has its prophet or Messiah who was exposed to a tempter,** and overcame all evil; its fastings and prayers; its miracles and its visions. Of Buddha's teachings Prof. Max Muller tells us that he used to say, "Nothing on earth is stable, nothing is real. ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... that at that moment my heart absolutely stood still. The tempter stood at my elbow and whispered, and I deliberately smothered the call of my conscience. I did what Joseph's brethren did, what brought Judas Iscariot to hopeless remorse. There was no doubt that the hue and cry was after the two elegantly ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... assured, and set your hearts at rest; for although I have lived above myself for some time past, yet I can be content with rags and poverty, and bread and water, and will embrace them, rather than forfeit my good name, let who will be the tempter. And of this pray rest satisfied, and think better of ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... that the millennial kingdom of the poor preached by Christ and the Apostles is an impossibility, and of the consequent strange amalgamation of practical optimism with theoretical pessimism. Jehovah now again became the gaoler of the powerful, Satan the tempter who incites to disobedience to the commands of God; at the same time, however, the order of the world—though instituted by God—was declared to be fundamentally bad and incapable of improvement, the work of redemption no longer being regarded as referring to ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... it seemed that he would go. Stung by the challenge, wrought on by the contempt in which Tavannes held him, he shot a look of hate at the tempter; he caught his breath, and laid his hand on the edge of the shuttering as if he ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... little stupider, if he had even made fewer friends, he might have walked safely all his life. As it was, instead of listening only to the Voice of God, he allowed himself to listen to one of the most dangerous suggestions of the Tempter. Nayler began to think that he might imitate Jesus Christ not only in inner ways, not only by trying to be meek and loving and gentle and self-sacrificing, as He was to all the people around Him. That ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... murders were levied as pledges for the benefit of the princes, and very distinctly understood to be levied against the wishes of the sepoy. But in the female sacrifice all parties concurred—sepoy and prince, tempted and tempter alike. I require you to murder this officer, as a pledge of your real hostility (which else might be a pure pretence) to the government. But the murder of the officer's wife and child rested on a motive totally different—namely, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the name of gentleman: for it is in the name of King Charles II. that an emissary, whom I took for an honest man, came and laid an infamous snare for me. I have fallen into that snare; so much the worse for me. Now, you the tempter," said he to the king, "you the executor," said he to D'Artagnan; "remember what I am about to say to you; you have my body, you may kill it, and I advise you to do so, for you shall never have my mind or my will. And now, ask ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
