"Tempter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day some tempter's crafty suit Would woo thee to a loveless bed: I see thee to the altar's foot A decorated ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... so, when other naughty boys would coax me into sin, I try to skwush the Tempter's voice 'at urges me within; An' when they's pie for supper, or cakes 'at 's big an' nice; I want to—but I do not pass my plate f'r them things twice! No, ruther let Starvation wipe me slowly out o' sight Than I should keep a-livin' on an' seein' ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... And half-shut fans of his admired wings, That in their scaly splendor put to shame Or gold or stone, lay on his ivory couch And shivered; for the dragon suffered pain: He suffered and he feared. It was his doom, The tempter, that he never should depart From the bright creature that in Paradise He for his evil purpose erst possessed, Until it died. Thus only, spirit of might And chiefest spirit of ill, could he ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... 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 a veritable pest when it tends to weaken faith. Faith, which is to ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... keep the money in charge I may not be proof against the temptation to use it for myself. As strong as my strong arms are my hates and loves, and for some reasons I would do almost anything to gain riches. I might not resist the tempter." ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... up! His technique has become almost universally successful. If he has made L50,000 by it, why not go on and make half a million; if he has made a million, why not go on and make three? All that you have to do, says the subtle tempter, is to reproduce the process of success indefinitely. The riches and the powers of the world are to be had in increasing abundance by the mere exercise of qualities which, though they have been painfully acquired, ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... tempter had thus spoken, methought his words were sweeter than honey, and I answered, "Alas, my lord, I am ashamed to appear before her face with such a proposal." Whereupon he straightway said, "Then do you write it to her; come, here is pen, ink, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... charcoal-burner for his burns, by the carter for his horse, by the brandy-distiller for his casks. It is a remedy for all ailments. The most dangerous of all the forest-devils is the brandy-distiller. He is better dressed than the others, has a kind word for everybody, and plays the tempter with but too ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... once on receiving his food in a basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by rolling himself among thorns. Once, when his austere rules and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... readers will exclaim. Perhaps he was; but even if you laugh at him, I think you will hardly despise him for his simple- mindedness, for who would not rather be such a one than the tempter, Tom Drift? ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... were 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 ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... in the spiritual life if we will boldly and bravely meet them in Jesus' name. We are encouraged by the apostle James to count all temptations a joy. It is evident that the apostle would not exhort us to count temptations a joy if they were not for our good. The Bible tells us there is a tempter. 1 Thes. 3:5. We also learn from the sacred page that God does not tempt any man. Jas. 1:13. Matthew tells us that the devil is the tempter. Mat. 4:1. God permits Satan to try and tempt us as we learn from Job's experience. Satan can not tempt ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... without 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 ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore
... not sail away from our sin; For all nature knew that we had done The awfullest deed beneath the sun Our burning eyes were forbid to weep, We lost the rest of the blessed sleep; For scared by dreams and terrified By visions, leaving us weary-eyed, We knew that the tempter's work was done, We had staked our souls ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... man should be suffocated by heaping over him a mass of clothes, and that every one should then leave the chamber. Such was the miserable and unpitied end of the Emperor Tiberius, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Such was the death, and so miserable had been the life, of the man to whom the Tempter had already given "the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," when he tried to tempt with them the Son of God. That this man should have been the chief Emperor of the earth at a time when its true King was living as a peasant in his village home at Nazareth, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... TEMPTER (coming forward and touching the STRANGER with his foot). The worm! You can make him believe whatever you like. That comes from his unbelievable pride. Does he think he's the mainspring of the universe, the originator of all evil? This ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... the nail and thorn! Thy tender flesh will ill sustain Thee when the sorrows of death and the pains of hell get hold upon Thee!" So Satan came; but there was no response in the heart of Christ, no answering voice from the depths of His soul, no traitor within to join hands with the tempter without. There was no square inch of territory in all Christ's nature which the devil could claim, or from which ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... tongue may devise,* — *relate Though that I might a thousand winters tell, — The pains of thilke* cursed house of hell *that But for to keep us from that cursed place Wake we, and pray we Jesus, of his grace, So keep us from the tempter, Satanas. Hearken this word, beware as in this case. The lion sits *in his await* alway *on the watch* To slay the innocent, if that he may. Disposen aye your heartes to withstond The fiend that would you make thrall and bond; He may not tempte you over your might, For Christ will ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... by the news than might have been expected. The shock which he had undergone twenty-four hours before had prepared him for almost any disaster; and it was impossible to be seriously angry with Prince George, who was hardly an accountable being, for having yielded to the arts of such a tempter as Churchill. "What!" said James, "is Est-il-possible gone too? After all, a good trooper would have been a greater loss." [543] In truth the King's whole anger seems, at this time, to have been concentrated, and not without ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... official mortality figures helped him to 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
... 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
... strangers began their tempting, and represented the case to be gained by the sale of men's souls. One man, bolder than the rest, made a bargain with the demons and gave them his soul for three hundred crowns of gold, and from that time he in his turn became a tempter. He boasted of his wealth, of the rich food the merchants gave him at times, of the potent wine he drank from their generously opened bottles, and, best of all, he vaunted his freedom from pity, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... man begins to weaken under the excessive and unnatural exercise. Unnatural, because the hours designed by God, our maker, to be used in rest and sleep are appropriated to another and very different purpose. Here the tempter discovers another weak point, and he makes the attack. The great draw made upon the physical forces makes it necessary—the tempter says—to use an artificial stimulant, which is here often taken the first time, and which is not unfrequently repeated, until many are so much under its influence ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... 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
... toleration, and satisfy all parties. He either had no deep religious convictions, like Coligny and Dandelot, or he preferred an undisturbed crown to the ascendency of the religion for which he had so bravely fought. What matter, the tempter said, whether he reigned as a Catholic or Protestant monarch, so long as religious liberty was given to his subjects? Could he have reigned forever, could he have been assured of the toleration of his successors, this plea might have had some force; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... glozed the Tempter, and his poison tuned; Into the heart of Eve his words made way, Though at the voice ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... already at his bedside, in order to counteract by his specious arguments and gloomy prognostics any less violent and criminal decision at which his royal master might have arrived during the solitude and silence of the night; and ably did the tempter perform his task. An increase of devotion and respect was skilfully blended with an apparent anxiety and alarm, which flattered the self-esteem and vanity of Louis, at the same time that they renewed all ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... 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
... 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 ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... answered Philip, "I am a tempter of a peculiar kind. I search constantly among women to find truth and virtue, and 'tis but seldom that I encounter them. Only the true and virtuous can keep me constant—therefore I am true to none; ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... only one way of safety—that of taking a perpetual pledge of total-abstinence. That, and that alone is the wall of sure protection. Without it, you are exposed to temptations on every hand. The manly and determined effort to be free will not always avail. In some weak and unsuspecting moment, the tempter will steal quietly in, and ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... 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 enemy. He stripped ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... having nought to do, Was pleased to let the magnet wheedle, Till closer still the tempter drew, And off at ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heart? "Consider Him that endured!" Listen to 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, ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... 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 not but ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... Gaffin have made such a proposition with a better prospect of success. Still the honest fellow was far from trusting his tempter. He knew well enough that whatever Gaffin might say to the contrary, the Lively was engaged in smuggling, though she certainly had escaped capture in a wonderful way, which was perhaps now partly accounted for. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... that Bridyeen was an innocent creature. You forgave Terence, who was her tempter. You love his memory and you have called your one son after him. Is it fair, is ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... in the portrayal of the girl when she "in her coffin sat, and did admire her winding sheet," before she related her experiences "among lonesome wild deserts and briary woods, which dismal were and dark." But immediately after her description of the lake of burning misery and of the fierce grim Tempter, the Puritan matter-of-fact acceptance of it all is suggested by the ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... and pray,' was Thy command, Lest, thoughtless, the disciples fall Beneath the tempter's bitter thrall; ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... He had appealed to Zarah's instincts, now he attempted to dazzle and pervert her reason. With subtle sophistry he brought forward arguments with which his mind was but too familiar. Pollux spoke of necessity, that artful plea of the tempter, who would try to make the Deity Himself answerable for the sin of His creatures, as having placed them under circumstances where such sin could not be avoided; as if strength of temptation were excuse sufficient for yielding to the temptation! Then the courtier spoke of the difference ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... had fallen from the wagon, and which Obed and I afterwards picked up, was a small cask of brandy. We were both of us very abstemious, or we should not have been the strong, hearty fellows we were. The cask, therefore, had not even been broached. The tempter, however, now came suggesting to me that I might soon forget all my miseries if I would but occasionally take a taste of the fire-water. I resisted him, however. I knew that if I once began I might ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... The sin is not lessened that the tempter is so near to thee. Like the sparkle of the red wine to the inebriate are the seductive influences of the ballroom. Thy foot will fall upon roses, but they will be roses of this world, not those that bloom for eternity. Thou wilt lose the ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... intermingled with groans, and accompanied with weeping. Sometimes he seemed to be holding conferences with some one who was making him considerable offers on condition of his performing some dangerous service. What he said in his own person, and in answer to his imaginary tempter, testified ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... a lesson he never afterward forgot. If he was tempted to do what he knew was wrong, he thought of Archy's day in the woods, and the tempter instantly left him. The boy who had been so badly hurt, did not die, as the doctor feared; but he suffered great pain, and was ill for a ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... and his face bespoke the utmost interest and agitation, as he pressed the letter upon Tom, and pointed to its destination, like the Tempter ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... purely spotless, these ladies genuinely took the tiny fly-spot for a spur to purification; and they viewed it as a patch to raise in relief their goodness. They gazed on it, saw themselves in it, and veiled it: warned of the cunning of an oft-defeated Tempter. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tormenting fears that I had committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, and an ancient Christian to whom I opened my mind told me he thought so, too, which gave me cold comfort. Thus, by strange and unusual assaults of the tempter was my soul, like a broken vessel, tossed and driven with winds. There was now nothing that I longed for but to be put out of doubt as to my full pardon. One morning when I was at prayer, and trembling under fear that no word of God could help me, that piece of a sentence darted in upon me: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Camillus to desire him to take the command; but he answered that he would not until they that were in the Capitol should legally appoint him. When this answer was returned, they admired the modesty and tempter of Camillus; but they could not tell how to find a messenger to carry the intelligence to the Capitol, or rather, indeed, it seemed altogether impossible for any one to get to the citadel whilst the enemy was in ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... clothes she had been washing; and as Nelly was carrying 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 were dressed so nicely, some of the ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... His father was not displeased at the thought of having him at the shop; but his mother was for some moments speechless with angry tribulation. Recovering herself, with scornful bitterness she requested to know to what tempter he had been giving ear—for tempted he must have been ere son of hers would have been guilty of backsliding from the cause; of taking his hand from the plough and looking behind him. The youth returned such answers as, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... who have bargained with Satan, offering the price of their own souls. When the Tempter came to the Saviour in the wilderness, he offered Him the glory and splendour of the world if Jesus would fall down and worship him. It is the same with us. Satan offers us this world instead of the world to come. He offers us our own way, so dear to all of us. He offers us the pleasures of the ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... guess, with her peculiarly painful intuition, who had been the tempter, but that did not lessen her severity towards the victim. In her resolution against a betting man, had she not trusted Frank too implicitly even to warn him of her vow? Nay, had she not felt him drifting from her all through the season, unjustly angered, unworthily distrustful, easily ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him as the type of man who preys on woman's virtue and exults in the number of souls he is able to destroy. She looked upon him as responsible for all her troubles, for her degradation and sacrifice of her womanhood. He was the eternal enemy of her sex, the arch tempter, the anti-christ. Her mind became obsessed with this idea, and a savage, unreasoning hate for him and all his kind sprang up ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... after a life spent in calm matronly happiness, with all that she loved best round her, would she have been nursed so tenderly or mourned so bitterly by the nearest and dearest of them all as she was by her tempter to sin? I think not. I believe that in all the world there never was a greater sorrow than that which Mohun endured as he saw his treasure slowly escaping him; never a desolation more complete and crushing than that which fell upon him as he stood by her corpse, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... like Ulysses. But he gets grimly carried back for all that, and is taken into the house and put on his shelf and left there, because I still happen to have a body attached to my spirit, which, if not fed at the ordinary time, becomes a nuisance. Yet he is right; luncheon is a snare of the tempter, and I would perhaps try to sail by it like Ulysses if I had a biscuit in my pocket to comfort me, but there are the babies to be fed, and the Man of Wrath, and how can a respectable wife and mother sail past any meridian shallows ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Another newspaper 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 heavier on the population than the absence of provisions ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... were you not, and had your musket of honour at Marengo. I remember you very well, my good friend. So the old fires are not yet extinguished! They still burn up when you think that your Emperor is wronged. And you, Colonel Despienne, you would not even listen to the tempter. And you, Gerard, your faithful sword is ever to be between me and my enemies. Well, well, I have had some traitors about me, but now at last we are beginning to see ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... excess of his glee, but let him excite himself to the highest pitch with pictures of the pleasing future, until they had acquired almost the complexion of fact and the truth of reality for his distracted imagination. When he had exhausted himself, the wily tempter resumed— ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... victorious, while the Liberals achieve occasional successes over their foes where he is not present, will be of much service to him. That "there is nothing so successful as success" is an idea as old as the day on which the Tempter of Man caused him to lose Paradise, and to the world's admission of it is to be attributed the decision of nearly every political contest which has distracted society. Miramon may have entered upon a career not unlike to that of Santa Ana, whose early victories enabled him to maintain his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... study of the Torah. Disguised as a Rabbi, he was approached by a man who promised to relieve him of all material cares if he would but abide with him. Refusing to leave Jabneh, the centre of Jewish scholarship, he said to the tempter: "Wert thou to offer me a thousand million gold denarii, I would not quit the abode of the law, and dwell in a place in which ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of Jesus Christ in the wilderness, angels came and brought him food.[26] The demon tempter said to Jesus Christ that God had commanded his angels to lead him, and to prevent him from stumbling against a stone; which is taken from the 92d Psalm, and proves the belief of the Jews on the article of guardian angels. The Saviour confirms ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Maria Theresa silenced her scruples, and persuaded herself that she was compelled to do as the tempter had suggested. She tore open the note; but true to her self-imposed vow, she paused on the threshold of dishonor, and read nothing ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... this and growing afraid of what these desperate men might do, fell back on guile. If they would surrender, the citizens of Haarlem were told, and pay two hundred and forty thousand florins, no punishment should be inflicted. So, having neither food nor hope, they listened to the voice of the tempter and surrendered, they who had fought until their garrison of four thousand was reduced ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... young lady. "Some piece of atrocious mischief, I'll be bound! He looks like the Miltonic Lucifer sometimes, that man, only not one half so good-looking; but there is a snakish, treacherous, cold-blooded glare in his greenish-black eyes that makes me think of the arch-tempter; and some people have the bad taste ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... It is the absence of this instinct in you that makes you that strange monster called a Devil. It is the success with which you have diverted the attention of men from their real purpose, which in one degree or another is the same as mine, to yours, that has earned you the name of The Tempter. It is the fact that they are doing your will, or rather drifting with your want of will, instead of doing their own, that makes them the uncomfortable, false, restless, artificial, petulant, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... in 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 ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Thus Goodall's tempter deserts him. That youth, uncomplaining and uncaring, takes a spell at coughing, and, recovered, wanders desultorily on down the street, the name of which he neither knows nor recks. At a certain point he perceives swinging doors, and hears, filtering between them a noise of wind and string ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... God made Her" we saw Eve as she was brought to Adam, and familiarized ourselves with the purposes He had in her creation, which were chiefly embodied in the one word "Helpmeet." In "Woman as a Tempter" we saw the ideal woman despoiled of her glory, and influencing the world to turn from the worship of the Creator to that of the creature. For ages woman suffered the consequences of sin. In Eve she lost her recognition; through Christ she regained it. The study of the Bible has convinced ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... and particular. The same Spirit within us pleads to the Spirit as without us; and in like manner is every evil mind in communion with the evil spirit. But, O comfort! the good alone is the actual, the evil essentially potential. Hence the devil is most appropriately named the 'tempter,' and the evil hath its essence in the will: it cannot pass out of it. Deeds are called evil in reference to the individual will expressed in them; but in the great scheme of Providence they are, only as far as they are good, coerced under the conditions ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... were closeted. For one moment he was tempted to place his ear to the keyhole! But a blush covered his fat cheeks at the very thought of acting such a disgraceful part. Like a wise fellow, he did not give the tempter a second opportunity, but, seizing the ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... I answered, 'since the Sea of Reeds is far away, and such tidings cannot travel thence in an hour. Get you gone, false tempter.' ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... that petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into Temptation," which, on the face of it, seems to support Nietzsche's extravagant reaction against Christianity. Yet surely the Church has misunderstood that petition. Jesus himself faced the Tempter, and it is evident that he could not have so lacked insight into the soul's secrets as to countenance the impossible notion of eliminating Temptation from the world. It was the power to meet the Tempter and yet not be led into Temptation—if this petition may be regarded as authentic—that he desired ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... yesterday. I always felt, up to that very time, the need of something better than I had got. Business had gone wrong ever since I opened shop, and my mind was quite unsettled. Satan tried very hard at me, but it wouldn't do. Sometimes, when my boy had gone home, and shop was shut up, the Tempter would whisper in my ears words like these—'Jehu, you're insured, over and over again, for your stock; let a spark fall on the shavings, and your fortune's made.' Well, sir, once or twice—will you believe it?—the Devil had nearly got ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation|, allective|; temptation, enticement, agacerie[obs3], allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c. 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility[obs3], persuasibleness[obs3]; attractability[obs3]; impressibility, susceptibility; softness; persuasiveness, attractiveness; tantalization[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Sinlessness was a matter of choice with Him, 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 ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... Mr. Pound, taking a limp, sprawling arm and lifting the culprit to his feet. "Tell me, who was the tempter who brought ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... looks behind and stretches his hand towards the beloved shadow, and the shadow fades away. Moral—for with Alfred everything has a moral—when going to Christ, never look behind, for fear of being beguiled by the tempter: a practical conclusion not to be ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... he added confidentially, "and would have made a good saving wife for a sober man with a little siller. She had a grip of doctrine, too. She was well versed in the fundamentals and would have made a good elder's wife. But, ay, man, the tempter comes in many a form, and it behoves us all to be ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the sixth Article simply implies "the Word of GOD is contained in Scripture; whence it does not follow that it is co-extensive with it." (p. 170.) "Under the terms of the Sixth Article one may accept literally, or allegorically, or as parable, or poetry, or legend, the story of a serpent-tempter, of an ass speaking with man's voice, of an arresting the earth's motion, of a reversal of its motion[90], of waters standing in a solid heap, of witches, and a variety of apparitions. So under the terms of the Sixth ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... than all my pride! You, cradled by misfortune,—your childhood reared amidst scenes of fear and vice, which, while they seared back the intellect, had no pollution for the soul,—your very parent your tempter and your foe; you, only not a miracle and an angel by the stain of one soft and unconscious error,—you, alike through the equal trials of poverty and wealth, have been destined to rise above all triumphant; the example of the sublime moral that teaches us with what mysterious beauty ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... possibly, he was guilty of the very heresy of which his daughter had said he was so intolerant. He seemed to doubt himself, these days, that Satan wore a spiked tail and a pair of cloven hoofs. Of late he rather leaned to the belief that the Arch-tempter had returned to walk the earth in the guise of a young Virginian and that he had assumed the incognito ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man, tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monk playing the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brown serge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One has heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenico had struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites recorded by St. Jerome, and he had conquered. I never knew anything comparable to the angelic serenity of gentleness of this victorious soul. I don't like monks, but I loved Father Domenico. I might have been ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Ganelon heard the tempter's voice, but he rode onward as if unheeding, his chin sunken upon his breast, his eyes ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... dead? What death?" John demanded. "He the way of the tempter trod, Forgetting the Master's weapon, And now he ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... 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
... and when Taylor had repeatedly afterward assailed him with like arguments, he had never wavered; and the only consequence of his advice had been to create dislike and mistrust of one who could advocate a practice so entirely at variance with the law of God. But now he listened to the tempter, and without reproof of the sin which he could not fail ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... the deserving as well as the undeserving people; that the workhouse test would separate the husband from wife, and the father from the children; and, above all, that certain clauses of the new measure would leave the once innocent girl who had been led astray by some vile tempter to bear the whole legal responsibility as well as the public shame of her sin. It is not necessary for us now to go over at any length the long arguments which were brought up on both sides of the controversy. Many capable and high-minded observers were carried away by what may be called the sentimental ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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 ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... lifelong tempter of Fate, had learned early in the game that the gravest errors in the category of crime came under that lachrymose heading, "wasted energy." Men of his stamp make it a point never to do anything that may be safely left undone, nor are they guilty of overlooking the act that should be performed. They ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... enemy himself, the alien creature, lies in his own camp, and in a speculative moment we may put ourselves in his place and learn to think of him charitably; but his spirit in our own souls is like a private tempter, a treasonable voice weakening our allegiance to our own duty. A zealot might allow his neighbours to be damned in peace, did not a certain heretical odour emitted by them infect the sanctuary and disturb his own dogmatic calm. In the same way practical people might leave ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... work, a rank Our Canada is called to fill:— She has but struggled till she sank Hers is it but to toil and till: No seat among the peoples ours."— So speaks the Tempter in our bowers. So soft he presses on his bonds:— But hark! a softer ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... "inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and suffered for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!—But I yielded not; I knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the scourge bit more fiercely into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I went on in peace and joy toward ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gypsy, aged seventeen, had got three months, it being assumed that he was the tempter: the reverse was ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... money-changers,' as in the Scriptures there are some true sayings and some spurious" ("Hom." ii. chap. 51; see also iii. chap. 50. and xviii. chap. 20). This saying of Christ is found in many of the Fathers. "To those who think that God tempts, as the Scriptures say he [Jesus] said: 'The tempter is the wicked one, who also tempted ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... 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 ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... the two ladies, like frightened, rescued children, would cling to their deliverer. They wished him to become the custodian and investor of their wealth. Ah, woman! who is a tempter like thee? But Honore said no, and showed them the danger ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... right, Lady Fareham. Temptation could not touch her. Sin, even the subtlest, could not so disguise itself that her purity would not take alarm. Yes; she is like Milton's lady. The tempter could not touch the freedom of her mind. Sinful love would wither at a look from ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... attention, and I went in there to see and hear what was passing. The first person upon whom my eyes rested was young Hammond, who sat talking with a man older than himself by several years. At a glance, I saw that this man could only associate himself with Willy Hammond as a tempter. Unscrupulous selfishness was written all over his sinister countenance; and I wondered that it did not strike every one, as it did me, with instant repulsion. There could not be, I felt certain, any common ground of association, for two such ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... the tempter from its gate! God shield the children, lest they fall From their stern fathers' free estate,— Till Ocean is its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to pay his expenses—he had not a farthing in his pocket. Advanced in life—a slow rider, and not a very sprightly horse—in the night—alone—twenty miles from home. Think of the lonesomeness; the time for the tempter to come and lead him to distrust in his Lord. But he struggled; the trial was short and the victory complete, for, said he, "Devil, I never stuck ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... what she had been reading on that first night was the thirteenth verse of the ninety-first Psalm. "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder. The young lion and the dragon thou shalt trample under foot." To her the adder meant the snake, the tempter in the Garden of Eden, and hence sex. What she wanted to choke was her own insistent sex urge of which the child was the symbol and the result. On later occasions she had the same sort of hallucinations in connection with another child and on sight of a brutish kind of man ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... be lured on by second-hand promises; and who venture, without being publicly acknowledged by their employers, to undertake any diplomatic mission. Nor would Cunningham, whose natural disposition to distrust was greater than his father's, have sold himself to any political tempter, without first signing and sealing the compact, had he been in possession of his cool judgment, and had he been in any other than the desperate circumstances in which he was placed. His secret conscience whispered that his recall was ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... there had been developed among the Persians, many centuries before the Christian era, the legend of a vain effort of the arch-demon, one seat of whose power was the summit of Mount Arezura, to tempt Zoroaster to worship him,—of an argument between tempter and tempted,—and of Zoroaster's refusal; and the doctor continued: "No Persian subject in the streets of Jerusalem, soon after or long after the Return, could have failed to know this striking myth." Dr. Mills then went on to show that, among the Jews, "the doctrine of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was rather a matter of discretion and secrecy; whereas faithfulness to her lover had been a point of the most rigorous honor. And Ninitta found Arthur Fenton's silken sympathy so insinuating, so soothing; the tempter, merely from his marvellous adaptability and faultless tact, so satisfied her womanly craving, and fostered her vanity; she was so completely made to feel that she was understood; she was tempted with a cunning the more infernal because Fenton kept himself always up to the level of sincerity by never ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... am by no means anxious to be held up as a moral scarecrow. Rather let me take warning myself, amend my life, abandon intemperance, which leads to all manner of wickedness, and suffer myself no more to be ensnared by the wiles and delusions of the tempter in the form of a fair woman. No—no—I will ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tempter!" he declared. "No more, you unctuous ambassador from the court of Gutenberg! Why, this one would take enough alfalfa at the present price a ton to bury your store under a haycock as high as ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... wily tempter; "I will prove myself the true friend of the Atheling, if he will only give consent to the deed by which I will make him this very day ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... came, and the birds twittered, and the stream ran proud and full, little sister Lizzie, bold and thoughtless, flushed with the passion of youth, bestowed herself on the tempter, and brought home a nameless child. Josie shivered and worked on, with the vision of schooldays all fled, with a face wan and tired,—worked until, on a summer's day, some one married another; then Josie crept to her mother like a ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the cunning tempter's art, And teach the race its duty, By keeping on its wicked heart Their eyes of light ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... same kind of unconsidered trifles.' The first 'trifle' of an event was the disturbance which Jenny (Mr. Gibson's cook) chose to make at Bethia's being dismissed. Bethia was a distant relation and protegee of Jenny's, and she chose to say it was Mr. Coxe the tempter who ought to have 'been sent packing,' not Bethia the tempted, the victim. In this view there was quite enough plausibility to make Mr. Gibson feel that he had been rather unjust. He had, however, taken care to provide Bethia with another ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Rouse thee! let thy spirit waken; List to, heed the word it saith! Think, ere thou consent to squander Aught of time in useless mirth; Think, ere thou consent to wander, Disregarding heaven-winged truth. When the wine in beauty shineth, When the tempter bids thee drink, Ere to touch thy hand inclineth, Be thou cautious-pause and think! Think, whatever act thou doest; Think, whatever word is spoke; Else the heart of friend the truest May be by thee, thoughtless, broke. How much grief had been prevented, If man ne'er had sought ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... that Leo Taxil charges another Masonic order of the androgyne type with satanic practices. He divides the Egyptian Rite of Adoption into three grades; in that of apprentice, the discourse represents Adonai as the Genius of Pride, and the serpent-tempter of Genesis as the eternal principle of goodness; in that of Companion, the symbolism of the ritual enforces the necessity of rehabilitating the character of the mystic serpent; in that of Egyptian Mistress, there is ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... had both behaved disgracefully, and that, if she had married, she must have led a very unhappy life. He caused the engagement to be broken off. She knew it was right, and made no complaint to anybody; but she always believed that it was her brother James who had been the tempter, who had led his friend astray; and from that time, though she was more devoted than ever to her sick sister, she was soft and bright to nobody else. She did not complain, but she thought that things had been very hard with her; and when people repine ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conduct of English schoolboys 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 precede the spirit ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... tavern of Fleet Street, the most immortal of them all, Ben Jonson's Devil, has also utterly vanished. Its full title was The Devil and St. Dunstan, aptly represented by the sign depicting the saint holding the tempter by the nose, and its site, appropriately enough, was opposite St. Dunstan's Church, on the south side of Fleet Street and close to Temple-bar. One of Hogarth's illustrations to "Hudibras" gives a glimpse of the tavern, but on the wrong side of the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... 'detested' the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes, when He affirmed and proclaimed their sin, and uttered those eight woes against them (Matt, xxiii.); He 'abhorred' the evil suggestions of Satan, when He bade the Tempter to get behind Him, shrinking from him as one would shrink from a hissing serpent in ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... course of Buddha's life, the tempter comes to him and promises him all the kingdoms of the earth. Buddha refuses everything in the words: "I know well that I am destined to have a kingdom, but I do not desire an earthly one. I shall become Buddha and make all the world exult with joy." The tempter has to own that ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... crimes, my daughter! grievous indeed; you have yielded to the tempter in your own person, caused the death of one man, you have led another astray, and have deceived him, when he claimed the reward of his iniquity; but all these are trifles compared to the offence upon the holy monk, which is the worst of sacrilege. And what was his fault? ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... listen—there will be victory! Truth goes in pairs. You will be tempted. The devil will attend to that. That is one truth. Its companion truth is this: you will be victorious over temptation as the new Master has sway. Your new Master will attend to that. Great and cunning and strong is the tempter. Do not underrate him. But greater is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. He got the victory at every turn during those thirty-three years, and will get it for you as many years and turns as shall make ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... parts of America, wherein this remarkable custom is represented 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 ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... golden future that he followed whither the gentle drawing led him, until he also reached the questionable ground of the World. There he became still further entangled until he was utterly under the sway of the tempter. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... gets what he hoped for by doing wrong, or, if he seem to do so, he gets something more that spoils it all. He pursues after the fleeing form that seems so fair, and when he reaches her side, and lifts her veil, eager to embrace the tempter, a hideous skeleton grins and gibbers at him. The siren voices sing to you from the smiling island, and their white arms and golden harps and the flowery grass draw you from the wet boat and the weary oar; but when a man lands he sees the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... bed," and he gave her a look that meant obedience for her. She went out of the door, and left him with his tempter. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which his features betrayed the force of the internal contest, the musician made his choice. He had not power to speak, but he raised his hand, and was on the point of making the cross upon his forehead, to guard him from the tempter, when Satan perceived his intention, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... temptation of Jesus, in his reply to the tempter, he says, "Thou shalt not live by bread alone;" the whole force of the argument depending on the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... runs by way of short cut through the middle of the field. The seed that falls there, left exposed on the surface, is picked up and devoured by birds. Behold in one picture God's gracious offer, man's self-destroying neglect, and the tempter's ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... a firm foundation for the brilliant edifice of your fortunes. For I love power for its own sake. I shall always rejoice in your enjoyment, forbidden to me. In short, my self shall become your self! Well, if a day should come when this pact between man and the tempter, this agreement between the child and the diplomatist should no longer suit your ideas, you can still look about for some quiet spot, like that pool of which you were speaking, and drown yourself; you will only be as you are ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... sympathy between them. She was very much in the habit of doing the same thing. He, on the other hand, was very well satisfied that the daughter of such a mother must be perverse and vain; and he was moralist enough to know that there is no heart so accessible to the tempter as the proud and wilful heart. But few words had passed between them, but those were expressive, and they both parted, with the firm conviction that they must ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... having resigned, had entered a restaurant of ill repute, had ordered champagne for an abandoned woman, and had no sense of sin when he awoke the next morning! The devil, in the language of orthodox theology, had led him there. He had fallen under the influence of the tempter of his youth, and all in him save the carnal had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has not; but I ought to have opened my eyes to it long ago, and I thank you for helping me. There—will you take that manuscript, and keep it out of my way? It has been a great tempter to me. It is finished now, and it might bring in something. But I can have only one thought now—how to make James happier and more ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... while listening to the splendid promises of the rich man who knelt at her feet, for a moment waver in her pride of virtue, or even dream of accepting his brilliant offers? No! for even had she no other scruples, a host of holy memories encircled her heart, as a shield of power against the tempter's wiles,—the memory of home, of the two loved beings she had left there, of former happiness in a more elevated sphere; and of a gentle mother, whose beauty and virtues she had inherited, whose counsels she remembered, and who was ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... hurried away, satisfied with the effect he had produced, and fled like the serpent who was the first tempter ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... daughter or sister 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 ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... make the children ready and send them to him and you stay on with your work?" whispered the tempter, and the suggestion sounded good to Austin. Again came the vision of his mother and her desire that he keep the children together. He pitied the poor little things to be left to the mercies of their careless father. He was fast losing all respect for his parent, and he could not bear ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... the priests invariably make God the author of sin. It was God who tempted Lucifer before the creation of the world; Lucifer, in his turn, became the tempter of man and the cause of all the evil our race suffers. It appears, therefore, that God created both angels and men to give them an ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... are too many who cannot withstand the tempter; but I never yet heard of an Indian who knew how to make it. It is only when they visit some of the ports, or the Red river settlement, that they obtain it. Or perhaps a trader may come this way, and bring ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... payment of one hundred dollars, then, would make a settler the owner of eighty acres in his own right. The prospect of actual ownership of a small tract made him far less ready to listen to the voice of the tempter in the form of the speculator, who had heretofore lured him to make larger purchases on credit than he could ever pay for by the labor ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when the tempter came to him, he said: 'If thou be the son of God command that these stones be made bread.' But he answered, and said 'It is written: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... instantly to proceed to hostility; and whereas they had formerly been prohibited from destroying the trees that surrounded a city, they were now ruthlessly to destroy all that lay in their path. This wrath of God against those who had tempted Israel to sin was justified, for "the tempter to sin is him of this world alone, but he that tempts another deprives him of this world and the world beyond." Two nations, the Egyptians and the Edomites, attacked Israel with the sword, but God nevertheless said, " Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; thou ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... descriptions of the evil spirit's mortification, and always ended by bestowing on him a hearty kick. From seeing the effect, in point of watchfulness, prayer, and zeal, produced on this young Christian by such continual realization of the presence of the great tempter, I have been led to question very much the policy, not to say the lawfulness, of excluding that terrible foe as we do from our general discourse. It seems to be regarded a manifest impropriety to name him, except with the most studied ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... through years of after life. Bereft of reason, as his friends declared, Rich consolation he at all times shared. Death—man's "last foe"—for him no terrors had, His blighted prospects did not make him sad. To leave his wife and babes he was resigned, And this while all deemed him of unsound mind. The tempter, true, his faith and feelings tried, But his suggestions met "God will provide." This simple text was strong enough to stay Each wavering thought that rose ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... cold," one thoughtless comrade said "And you have far to walk; here, drink, my boy." The child pushed back the tempter's hand, a glow Of indignation mantling cheek and brow,— "My mother says there's poison in the cup, And I will never drink," he firmly said. The father gave him an approving smile, Patted his rounded cheek, and stroked his curls, Then heaved a sigh—while o'er his manly ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... succeeded yet? Warring against Ormuzd, Ahura Mazda, was Ahriman, Angra Mainyus, literally the being of an evil mind, the ill-conditioned being. He was labouring perpetually to spoil the good work of Ormuzd alike in nature and in man. He was the cause of the fall of man, the tempter, the author of misery and death; he was eternal and uncreate as Ormuzd was. But that, perhaps, was a corruption of the purer and older Zoroastrian creed. With it, if Ahriman were eternal in the past, he would not be eternal in the future. Somehow, somewhen, somewhere, in the day when three prophets—the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... once a time when I was tempted to preach some other message," continued Jesus. "Soon after I was baptized by John in the Jordan River, I went alone into the wilderness to pray and to seek the will of the Heavenly Father. For forty days I fasted. The Tempter came to me in a vision and said to me, 'If you are really the Son of God, turn this stone into bread!' I could have great power over men if I were willing to satisfy the desires of these hungry people!" ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... 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 monarch justly reigned, And making every heart his own The love ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... child! In doing for her lay the only expiation possible for him in the world. What were the claims of that man over on the dunes compared to his, should he powerfully press them? What if Captain Billy had given his life to the doing of a duty belonging to another? The Tempter now took on a virtuous, unselfish guise. Think what the girl's life might be! Could any true love, even such stupid love as Billy might bear her, stand in the way? No; Billy would be the first to ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... years ago, may not yet be generally accepted, and though Bishop Colenso's criticisms may still lie, formally, under ecclesiastical ban, yet the Church has not wholly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the scientific tempter; and many a coy divine, while "crying I will ne'er consent," has consented to the proposals of that scientific criticism which the memorialists ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... they were the evil geniuses of Dermot's life. Lord Malvoisin had been his first tempter as boys at their tutor's, and again in the Guards; and Ernest, or Nessy, Horsman was the mauvais sujet of the family, who never was heard of without some disgraceful story. And Dermot had led my boys among these. All that had brightened life ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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, ye'll ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... woman of the world, whom the Hebrews call Eve, had hardly been induced or allured into the temptation of eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life if it had not been forbidden her so to do. And that you may give the more credit to the validity of this opinion, consider how the cautelous and wily tempter did commemorate unto her, for an antecedent to his enthymeme, the prohibition which was made to taste it, as being desirous to infer from thence, It is forbidden thee; therefore thou shouldst eat of it, else thou canst not be ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... When the tempter me pursu'th With the sins of all my youth, And half damns me with untruth, Sweet ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... brought me to the last shilling, the last lodging, and the last meal. What shall I do? Where shall I go? I tried to think. Must I starve? Surely there must be some door still open for honest willing endeavour, but where? What can I do? "Drink," said the Tempter; but to drink to drunkenness needs cash, and oblivion by liquor demands ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... 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, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... are the cages of the decoy-birds—Linnets and Chaffinches, Greenfinches and Yellowhammers, Buntings and Ortolans—sharp-eared creatures which, on perceiving the distant passage of a flock of their own kind, forthwith utter a short calling note. One of them, the Sambe, an irresistible tempter, hops about and flaps his wings in apparent freedom. A bit of twine fastens him to his convict's stake. When, worn with fatigue and driven desperate by his vain attempts to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... me, 'twas a place, an hour, The worst that e'er the tempter's power Could tangle me or you in; Sweet Nea, let us roam no more Along that wild and lonely shore. Such walks ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... and I saw myself and my associates in the right colours, myself as a miserable dupe, them as vile sharpers. So confounded was I by the suddenness of the illumination, that for a moment I stood speechless and motionless, gazing vacantly into the tempter's face. He took my silence for acquiescence, and opened his lips to continue his base hints and instructions. Roused into vehement action by the sound of his odious voice, I grasped his collar, and seizing a horsewhip that lay opportunely ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various |
