“The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.”

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”

“I am tormented by temptations."
"What kind? There is a cure for temptation."
"What?"
"Yielding to it.”

“Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.”

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

“Yield to temptation… it may not pass your way again!”

“They must not fear, nor regard as sin, or take to heart any evil impulses to sin or to blasphemy, or doubts about the Sacrament, or any other such ugly temptations; for to experience these temptations defiles the soul no more than the bark of a dog or the bite of a flea. They trouble the soul but do not harm it provided a man puts them aside and ignores them. It does no good to struggle against them, or to try and master them by force, for the more a person struggles against them, the more persistent they become.”

“His work is full of the signs of those two cardinal sins from which (as Kafka pointed out) all the others spring: impatience and laziness. The work of every artist is conditioned by the way in which he resists or yields to these temptations.”

“The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.”