Thomas à Kempis on Temptation

http://www.catholicarchive.org/thomas_a_kempis/the_imitation_of_christ/1/13.html

"So long as we live in this world we cannot escape suffering and temptation. Whence it is written in Job: 'The life of man upon earth is a warfare.' Everyone, therefore, must gaurd against temptation and must watch in prayer lest the devil, who never sleeps but goes about seeking whom he may devour, find occation to deceive him. NO one is so perfect or so holy but he is sometimes tempted; man cannot be altogether free from temptation.

Yet temptations, thouh troublesome and severe, are often useful to a man, for in them he is humbled, purified, and instructed. The saints all passed through many temptations and trials to profit by them, while those who could not resist becaome reprobate and fell away. There is no state so holy, no place so secret that temptations and trials will not come. Man is never safe from them as long as he lives, for the come within us - in win we were born. When one temptation or trial passes, another comes; we shall always have something to suffer because we have lost the state of original blessedness."