Every great story has its unique set of destiny moments. And the best opportunities to build yourself a great story are often in those tough moments when you are tempted to give up on a worthy dream.

I don't so much mind looking back on having lost the election, or having been denied a role in the play, or having had my novel repeatedly rejected, or having been turned down for a date, or recalling laughter at my expense when I attempted some silly challenge. ?Those things simply prove that I?lived life. ?What I do mind, however, is looking back on the lost opportunities where imagined concerns kept me from even trying-lose or win. ?I've learned that there is no regret in a brave attempt, only in cowering to fear.

When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels- welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.

My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen God, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!

It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.

Whole world was nothing but a big rattrap. It set baits for people by offering riches and joys, shelter and food, heat and clothing exactly as the rattrap offered cheese and pork. As soon as anyone let himself be tempted to touch the bait, the rattrap closed in on him, and then everything came to an end.

Let's say I have a mystical soul and a rational brain, and, like Montaigne, I am incapable of choosing between them. I don't know if I believe in God, but I am often tempted to believe.

Our craving for generality has [as one] source ? our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is "purely descriptive.

"Of course, now I had the problem of communicating what I needed. Marlen was still beating on the door, and Dimitri would be up in a couple of minutes. I glared at the human, hoping I looked terrifying. From his expression, I did. I attempted the caveman talk I had with Inna...only this time the message was a little harder.

The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger and desperation at its heart. It must also be said that not all woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place.

You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws ' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.

The whole of science and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here and how do you fit in and what's it all about.

The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money.

Each morning sees some task begun each evening sees it close Something attempted something done has earned a night's repose.

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down provided it is the right temptation put in the right spot.

When I hear somebody sigh 'Life is hard ' I am always tempted to ask 'Compared to what?'

People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood who were funny without swearing were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.

I'm tempted by everything. My husband makes fun of me because every day it's a new food that I love. I have a weakness for butterscotch pudding ice cream in any flavor and dark chocolate although that's one thing I do keep in my house - 70% dark chocolate.

Mass communication radio and especially television have attempted not without success to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.