"I can resist anything except temptation." -- Oscar Wilde

"Temptation is the desire to fall, to fail, to faint and to squander all one's reserves until there is no firm ground beneath
one's feet." -- Georges Bataille

"Leonardo da Vinci said: when a man with a joyous thrill is waiting for a new day, new spring, new year, he doesn’t suspect that, in this case, in essence, he desires his own death. Though, this aphorism of Leonardo da Vinci in its form of expression is not grotesque, the spirit of carnival lies at its base." -- Mikhail Bakhtin

"The collusion of children with clowns is a collusion with art, which adults drive out of them .... If games of chance are the opposite of art, as forms of play they nevertheless extend into art." -- Theodor W. Adorno