Satan attempts to make sin a habit in humans or cause it to become a part of their nature. This is so that people will commit sin without thinking, perhaps even unintentionally, and without gaining any pleasure or profit from the sin. They sin, rather, because sin has become a spontaneous part of their nature.

—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

You might say, “God I can’t fight my thoughts,” and so, God fights against the thoughts for you; or, “God I can’t fight my feelings,” and so, God fights against the feelings for you.

—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

One is cautious in life, constraining the self until it walks uprightly, and yet rejoicing from the inside. I always tell people that the narrow gate is narrow at the beginning. It is triangular shaped: at the beginning you find difficulty, and the farther you go, it widens, until you reach its wide base of joy. The beginning is the period where “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; but at the end, the more the body surrenders to the spirit, and the more the spirit takes its ease, the more the person rejoices saying, “He also brought me out into a broad place.”! He took me out of the stage of war between the body (matter) and spirit, and brought me into a broad place-God’s love, in which a person lives happy.

—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

Each time we catch ourselves in a thought, we just return our attention to what is above it: to our spirit and to God. We do not validate the thought by giving it any more attention. This is already to repulse or cut off the thought without directly struggling against it. It is active, not passive;

—Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), Christ the Eternal Tao p.309

Do not be tempted by physical beauty

—St. Jerome

I had been capable of having her, not twice in succession but two hundred times, I should have found myself in the end just as unsatisfied as the first time. In short, the more I had her the less I possessed her,

Boredom
Alberto Moravia

It was an almost irresistible temptation, sweet and reassuring, and it made me think of the temptation to fall asleep which sometimes gets the better of us in spite of ourselves, causing us to dream that we are resisting sleep and are awake, when in reality we are already fast asleep.

Boredom
Alberto Moravia

…you are the image of God. Therefore, be spiritual, despising the flesh, which is only your temporal home; be holy, kind, wise, just, watchful, and courageous, unchangeable in good, and satisfied with everything.

—St. John of Kronstadt

“He who is inclined to lust is merciful and tender-hearted; those who are inclined to purity are not so” (Saint John Climacus). It took a saint, neither more nor less, to denounce so distinctly and so vigorously not the lies but the very essence of Christian morality, and indeed of all morality.

—E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

Remember death, so all worldly temptations will disappear and you feel that,” all is vanity and grasping for the wind.” (Eccl 1:14).

—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. III