“Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.”
Source: Sodom Had No Bible (1971)
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Leonard Ravenhill 23
British writer 1907–1994Related quotes

Entertaining Angels
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri

Some Reasons Why (1881)
Context: The believer in the inspiration of the Bible is compelled to say, that there was a time when slavery was right, when women could sell their babes, when polygamy was the highest form of virtue, when wars of extermination were waged with the sword of mercy, when religious toleration was a crime, and when death was the just penalty for having expressed an honest thought. He is compelled to insist that Jehovah is as bad now as he was then; that he is as good now as he was then. Once, all the crimes that I have mentioned were commanded by God; now they are prohibited. Once, God was in favor of them all; now the Devil is their defender. In other words, the Devil entertains the same opinion to-day that God held four thousand years ago. The Devil is as good now as Jehovah was then, and God was as bad then as the Devil is now.

Whig. 1847:12:03, 1845:1845:09:03. Reprinted in That D----d Brownlow by Steve Humphrey. Appalachian Consortium Press, 1978. Boone, North Carolina.
Jonesboro Whig (1840 to 1949)

The Conundrum of the Workshops, Stanza 1 (1890).
Other works
Source: The Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses
Context: When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It's pretty, but is it Art?”

Speech at the Albert Hall, London (3 December 1936) at a cross-party meeting organised by the League of Nations Union "in defence of freedom and peace", quoted in The Times (4 December 1936), p. 18
The 1930s

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 241

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus