Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.
Interpretation
Temptation influences individuals to act in ways that may not align with their true intentions or goals.
This quote by H. L. Mencken highlights the concept that temptation can exert a powerful influence over people, compelling them to act in ways that may contradict their values or desires. The metaphor suggests that just as a movable body can be swayed by external forces, so too can human behavior be affected by tempting situations that challenge oneβs self-control and resolve.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about human psychology during a seminar.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.
Commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways.
He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth - and not even as a traveler towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.
A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society.
My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.