Quotes about devil (934 quotes, page 4)

“Your angel cannot protect you against that which neither god nor the devil had made”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

God , Angels

“Before he can become a wolf, the lycanthrope strips naked. If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Source: Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

Wolf

“Arm there," she said. "Other arm, idiot. Now hand there… okay, ready? We're going to start with your left foot. On three. One. Two… What the devil is he doing here?”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

“Good thing he's dead," Lula said, "or that would have hurt like the devil.”

Janet Evanovich book Hot Six

Source: Hot Six

Hurt , Dead

“Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

Tree , Christmas , Dead

“you can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.'
'My pet, I've been to the Devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, not even for you.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

“Becuse God loves us, but the devil takes an interest.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

Love , God

“Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Source: Main Street

War , Pleasure , Nature

“The devil will give up when he sees that you are not going to give in.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Prologue.
Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)

Truth

“If you have any care for Sin at all,
don't leave him in darkness. It's not fair to show someone the sun and then to banish him from it. Even the
devil may cry when he looks around hell and realizes that he's there alone - Acheron (Devil May Cry)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Hell , Sun , Cry

“Nay, it's not the Devil been leading her astray. It's books! That girl has been nothing but trouble ever since she learned how to read.”

Anya Seton book The Winthrop Woman

Source: The Winthrop Woman

Books , Girl , Learning , Reading

“Enjoy your life. No curse hangs over you, nor did it ever. No devil chases after your soul. Sing and dance and be merry.”

Christopher Pike book Sati

Source: Sati

Life , Soul , Singing , Dance

“I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life , Dreams , Mountain , Change

“Man provides his own goods and his own evils, neither God nor the Devil has anything to do with it.”

Diana Norman (1933–2011) British author and journalist

God , Evil

“What you should really be sorry for," he continued, "is that for the rest of my life, I'll have to avoid wine cellars to keep from thinking about you."
"Why? Was kissing me that bad?"
A devil-solf whisper. "No sweetheart. It was that good.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

Life , Kiss , Thinking , Wine

“God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.”

William Peter Blatty book The Exorcist

Source: The Exorcist

God

“Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.”

Martha Stout (1953) American psychologist

Source: The Sociopath Next Door

Feeling

“Never let the brain idle. ‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.’ And the devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“And the first rude sketch that the world has seen
was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it art?”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

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?”

World , Art , Heart , Joy

“For we have thought the longer thoughts
And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devils' tunes, Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
Another in the day.”

Ernest Hemingway book 88 Poems

Source: 88 Poems

Way , Home , Dance , Night

“Black coffee’s a lot like whiskey, you know? All devil and no trimmin’s. Always liked my sins pure and take it as it comes.”

Jack Ketchum (1946–2018) American horror writer

Coffee

“Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

“When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage! An invisible and all-powerful enemy—some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

God , Soul , Courage , Joy

“When the devil comes knocking on your door simply say "Jesus, it's for you.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: Sunsets

“… the devil on my right shoulder must have brutally strangled the angel on my left…”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Playing with Fire

Angels

“Who knew that the devil had a factory where he made millions of fossils, which his minions distributed throughout the earth, in order to confuse my tiny brain?”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Source: Me of Little Faith

“But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

God , Victory

“"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman;
The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!"
"Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil;
"The bloodier the better for me."”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

St. 33.
The Devil's Walk http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/shelley/devil/devil.rs1860.html (1799)

“There's reason for ghastliness. Eustacia, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. V, ch. 3
The Return of the Native (1878)

Happiness

“620. An idle Person is the Devil's Playfellow.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: 3054. Idle Fellows are the Devil's Playfellows.

Personality

“When I was hired they showed me my desk, an old beat-up scarred wooden desk, and they told me that it had been O. Henry’s desk when O. Henry worked for the paper, as he had at one time. And I readily believed it. I could see the place where O. Henry had savagely stabbed the desk with his pen in pursuit of a slimy adjective just out of reach, and a kind of bashed-in-looking place where O. Henry had beaten his poor genius head on the desk in frustration over not being able to capture the noun leaping like a fawn just out of reach… So I sat down at the desk and I too began to chase those devils, the dancy nouns and come-hither adjectives, what joy.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“Return”, p. 55.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

Time , Joy

“(Young girl rejecting Devil's attempt to purchase her soul) Bag your face.... You set off the smoke detector, ham breath.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 142

Soul , Girl

“You’re so hypnotizing,
Could you be the devil, could you be an angel?
Your touch magnetizing,
Feels like going floating, leaves my body glowing.
They say be afraid,
You’re not like the others, futuristic lovers.
Different DNA, they don’t understand you.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

E.T., written by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Joshua Coleman, and Kanye West
Song lyrics, Teenage Dream (2010)

Angels , Feeling , Lovers , Understanding

“I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God , Evil , Time , Heart

“"Devilling", properly so called, by which is designated in England the system whereby a young barrister assists a busy counsel by digesting and annotating his papers, looking up authorities, drafting opinions, and sometimes holding his brief for him in Court, is not know and indeed is not permitted in Scotland.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 26

Business

“Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Here's a really blunt question: would the world be a better or a worse place if a billion Muslims became evangelical Christians tomorrow?
Penn: [long pause] Everything else being equal, I think "yes".
Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Then we agree.
Penn: The argument is made by me that the celebration of faith, the glorification of faith, and faith being defined as The Bible kind of does as belief without proof, is not something that I feel is good to celebrate. To answer the question about evil, I always find that evil takes responsibility away. I want to have—whether it’s me or whether it's a criminal—I want to have full responsibility of my mistakes. And I think when you have this image, whether it's the Disney image of devil Pluto and angel Pluto on your shoulders, pulling you one direction or another, I think that idea of evil is an idea that is anti-responsibility.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

The Glenn Beck Program, April 12, 2013. Edited, including omission of some non-germane remarks. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJk0XFlErTA
2010s

World , Faith , Angels , Feeling

“With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og,
For every inch that is not fool is rogue :
A monstrous mass of fuul corrupted matter,
As all the devils had spew'd to make the baiter.
When wine has given him courage to blaspheme,
He curses God, but God before curst him;
And, if man could have reason, none has more.
That made his paunch so rich, and him so poor.”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. II, lines 462–469.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

God , Fools , Courage , Wine

“The devil makes work for idle thirsts. But given the choice between booze and cannabis, I go for ganja every time.”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

As quoted in Exclusive: Dennis Nilsen: My Prison Life of Drink and Drugs http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/exclusive-dennis-nilsen-prison-life-555104, Mirror.co.uk (27 August, 2005)

Time

“Evidently god stupidly created a system where the devil wins by default. Okay, I'm gonna set up this game with you and I'm gonna give you all the chips and the chips have to voluntarily choose to come over to my side of the table. Who sets up a game like that?!”

Matt Dillahunty (1969) American activist

Episode 697: Family Values (February 20, 2011)
The Atheist Experience

God , Game

“Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devil says: `I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvellous machine.”

Michael Atiyah (1929–2019) British mathematician

[Michael Atiyah, Collected works. Vol. 6, The Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, Oxford Science Publications, http://www.math.tamu.edu/~rojas/atiyah20thcentury.pdf, 978-0-19-853099-2, 2160826, 2004]

Soul , Question

“I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. … One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23 (Jul-Sep 1992)

Teachers , Reading , Country

“These Last Words were said for believing and true sureness that it is our Lord Jesus that shewed me all. And right as in the first word that our good Lord shewed, signifying His blissful Passion, — Herewith is the devil overcome, — right so He said in the last word, with full true secureness, meaning us all: Thou shalt not'be overcome.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 68

Passion

“Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves;
Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems;
Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Arachne" (1928), line 1; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 34.
The Complete Poems

Death , Birth , Sea

“None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

1840s, Letters from New York (1843)
Source: Letters from New York http://www.bartleby.com/66/59/12260.html, vol. 1, letter 34

Imagination , Courage , Universe

“I got my finger on the trigger
But I don't know who to trust.
When I look into your eyes
There's just devils and dust.
We're a long, long way from home, Bobbie.
Home's a long, long way from us.
I feel a dirty wind blowing
Devils and dust.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Devils & Dust"
Song lyrics, Devils & Dust (2005)

Way , Feeling , Home

“The devil gave me a look which made me profoundly uneasy. 'Just because I am enjoying your sympathy, don't imagine that I cannot read you like a book,' he said. 'You think you are cleverer than I; it is a very common academic delusion.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

When Satan Goes Home For Christmas
High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories (1982)

Books , Imagination , Thinking , Reading

“Besides the fact of the Christians rejecting all the heathen ceremonies, we must not forget that they plainly maintained that all the heathen religions were false. The Christians thus declared war against the heathen rites, and it is hardly necessary to observe that this was a declaration of hostility against the Roman government, which tolerated all the various forms of superstition that existed in the empire, and could not consistently tolerate another religion, which declared that all the rest were false and all the splendid ceremonies of the empire only a worship of devils.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

M. Aurelius Antoninus

Hostility , War , Religion , Falseness

“The Devil doesn't make us do anything. The Devil, for example, doesn't make us mean. Rather, when we're mean, we make the Devil. Literally. Our actions create him. Conversely, when we behave with compassion, generosity, and grace, we create God in the world.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)

God , World

“If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

30 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Men , Angels , Dependency

“Some readers will no doubt say that a devil is inside me; and though my faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, in that the signal comes and goes, I can only hope that isn't so.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"What's so funny about the Passion?", Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2004, p. 24.
2000s, 2004

Faith , Hope

“Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience.
They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil!
This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer.
The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)

People , World , Education , Way

“A man with a mouth like a mastiff, a brow like a mountain and eyes like burning anthracite — that was Dan'l Webster in his prime. And the biggest case he argued never got written down in the books, for he argued it against the devil, nip and tuck and no holds barred. And this is the way I used to hear it told.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

Books , Way , Mountain

“Our Lord the Devil's their Word, the Word Thelema, spoken of me The Beast.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 242

“He must needes goe whom the devill doth drive.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 7.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He was a man
Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven
To serve the Devil in.”

Robert Pollok book The Course of Time

Book viii, line 616.
The Course of Time (published 1827)

“When told by a constituent that he would rather vote for the devil, Wilkes responded: "Naturally." He then added: "And if your friend decides against standing, can I count on your vote?"”

John Wilkes (1725–1797) English journalist and politician

Nature

“To me, there are two different types of musicians. Those who are display oriented and those who are content oriented, Bill Evans being a prime example of the content orientation. I am not interested in the displayers—guys who want to be playing a lot of notes to try to impress you that they got a lot of things that they can lay in there. I'm more interested in somebody picking something that has some really great feeling and laying it in, in a really good time concept. Jimmy Rowles is a perfectly good example of that. His choice of notes may not be uncommon, but boy where he lays them down is so individual that I will go for that every time. The same thing applies with composers. When you're a young composer and you first have a chance—and this goes with everybody—you write your most complex works when you're a young man. And then, as you get a little bit older, you find that you can lot simpler things [sic] and still enjoy the devil out of what you're doing.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT461&lpg=PT461&dq=%22It+seems+that+today,+particularly+with+younger+piano%22&source=bl&ots=vkOwylFb7q&sig=zPFSLx48xHOhugAAlpcRNKTxUlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY_Zay4cbRAhWLKiYKHdVRC3gQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (1992, 2006, 2014)

Guy , Feeling , Boy , Chance

“We've got to help each other, seeing as God doesn't help us. Do you see how great Jesus' idea was? Imagine how much it must have irritated God. Forget the devil, Jesus was the only true enemy of God, and he's the only friend us poor wretches have.”

Umberto Eco book The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004)

God , Imagination , Idea , Help

“It would be a sad thing for an artist if he knew how to paint. – so sad. An artist paints because it is a challenge to him – it is like trying to twist the devil. If you overcome it, there is no sport left. I don't even like to talk about painting. It is impossible to talk about painting because I don't know what it is. If I knew what it was I would get out a patent and then no one else would be able to paint.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

1942 - 1948, A Painter in a Glass House' (1948)

Sadness , Sport , Painting

“We are accused of all sorts of terrible things, of us wanting to undermine your market, of dumping and so forth. There was no such talk before, but when you had your recession, there were people who wanted to put the whole blame on the Russians. All these fables of us being such terrible devils are not well founded. We want to trade in earnest and well.”

Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978) Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman

Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote (1959)

People

“Are these the choice dishes the Doctor has sent us?
Is this the great poet whose works so content us?
This Goldsmith’s fine feast, who has written fine books?
Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks?”

David Garrick (1717–1779) English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer

Epigram on Goldsmith’s Retaliation. Vol. ii. p. 157. Compare: "God sendeth and giveth both mouth and the meat", Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557); "God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks", John Taylor, Works, vol. ii. p. 85 (1630).

Books , Cooking

“Now I just don't know who to tell to go to hell
Who put the old devil in the distorted angel?”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Distorted Angel
Song lyrics, All This Useless Beauty (1996)

Angels , Hell

“I am as excited as in my first show. There the circle closes itself. The Devil's circle.”

Anke Engelke (1965) German actress

Ich bin so aufgeregt wie in meiner ersten Sendung. Da schließt sich der Kreis. Der Teufelskreis.
On the last Anke Late Night show (21 October 2004)

“… man is the animal that moralizes. Man is also the animal that complains about being one, and says that there is an animal, a beast inside him—that he is brother to dragons. (He is certainly a brother to wolves, and to pandas too, but he is father to dragons, not brother: they, like many gods and devils, are inventions of his.)”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“On the Underside of the Stone”, p. 177
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

God , Animals

“Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold,
Exceedingly bold indeed;
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed.
But we that sit in a sturdy youth,
And still can drink strong ale,
Oh—let us put it away to infallible truth,
That always shall prevail.
[semi-chorus:]
And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,
And howling heretics too;
And all good things
Our Christendom brings,
But especially barley brew!”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

the "Pelagian" drinking song, p. 50
The Four Men: A Farrago (1911)

Truth , Youth , Faith , Drink

“I’m wondering whose side I ought to be on. I’m getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don’t give the poor chap a chance. There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.
‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil

Men , People , Books , Nature

“Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the Devil. Other than that, though, it's been a good day.”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

Opening line
E=MO² (1985), A Fine How Ya Do

Love , Life , Time

“Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Pope Francis quotes Bloy in his first homily as Pope. Pope Francis: 1st homily. Missa pro Ecclesiae in the Sistine Chapel http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-1st-homily-full-text

God

“The bane of all that dread the Devil.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

The Idiot Boy.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil, where he is known.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1773
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)

Distant , Country

“MR. PANSCOPE. (suddenly emerging from a deep reverie.) I have heard, with the most profound attention, everything which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the authority of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.
MR. ESCOT. I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason.
MR. PANSCOPE. The authority, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.
SQUIRE HEADLONG. Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.
MR. ESCOT. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.
MR. PANSCOPE. I am not obliged, Sir, as Dr Johnson remarked on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.
MR. ESCOT. I fear, Sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.
MR. PANSCOPE. 'Sdeath, Sir, do you question my understanding?
MR. ESCOT. I only question, Sir, where I expect a reply, which from what manifestly has no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate.
MR. PANSCOPE. I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd.
MR. ESCOT. I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.
MR. PANSCOPE. Death and fury, Sir!
MR. ESCOT. Say no more, Sir - that apology is quite sufficient.
MR. PANSCOPE. Apology, Sir?
MR. ESCOT. Even so, Sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument.
MR. PANSCOPE. Lightnings and devils!”

Thomas Love Peacock book Headlong Hall

Headlong Hall, chapter V (1816).

Death , Men , Pain , Fear

“The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville
The Name of the Rose (1980)

Truth , Faith , Smile

“Can anyone with intelligence really believe that a child born today should be doomed because the snake tempted Eve and Eve tempted Adam? To believe that is not God-worship; it is devil-worship.
Can anyone call this scheme of creation and damnation moral? It defies every principle of morality, as man conceives morality. Can anyone believe today that the whole world was destroyed by flood, save only Noah and his family and a male and female of each species of animal that entered the Ark? There are almost a million species of insects alone. How did Noah match these up and make sure of getting male and female to reproduce life in the world after the flood had spent its force? And why should all the lower animals have been destroyed? Were they included in the sinning of man? This is a story which could not beguile a fairly bright child of five years of age today.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

Life , God , Age , World

“God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot; He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word.”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 274.

God , Hell

“God never had a church but there, men say,
The Devil a chapel hath raised by some wyles.
I doubted of this saw, till on a day
I westward spied great Edinburgh’s Saint Gyles.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

Posthumous Poems, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Section 4, Member 1, Subsection 1 .

Men , God

“Thrown into a dungeon,
Bread and water was my portion,
Faith - my only weapon,
To rest the devil's legion.
The speak-hole would slide open,
A viper's voice would pleade,
A voice think with innuendo,
Syphillis and greed.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Mercy

Faith , Thinking , Water

“Good at a fight, but better at a play;
Godlike in giving, but the devil to pay.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

On a Cast of Sheridan's Hand.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Fight

“(Woman) I'm curious about my demise. (Devil)…at a party…When you hear about the latest presidential betrayal on an issue you hold dear, you pitch over the terrace railing and fall 43 stories.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 55

Betrayal

“Then I found my head one day when I wasn’t even trying
And here I have to say, ‘cause there is no use in lying, lying
Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now?
Kick out the devil’s sin, pick up, pick up a good book now.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

On The Road To Find Out
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Books , Lying

“My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.”

J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) Geneticist and evolutionary biologist

Fact and Faith (1934) Preface

God , World , Angels , Success

“4243. Speak the Truth, and shame the Devil.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Truth

“Homosexuality seeks to destroy marriage as we know it, unity as we know it, family life as we know it, so how can we endorse that? That is completely outside what God planned for humanity. When God created man, he saw man was alone and added a female mate for him. Why didn't he pick one of the baboons, one of the lions to make his partner? He could have done so. He didn't. Homosexuality is nothing short of sinning against God with impunity as you are going against his will. Homosexuality is wrong, it's from the devil.”

Peter Akinola (1944) Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria

Interview in The Christian Science Monitor, 8 January 2007

Life , God , Marriage , Family

“The Children of God are launching the attack. They are on the offensive. They are invading hell's gates. The Children of God are raiding the Devils territory, just as you do when you go out witnessing, right on the Devil's ground, right into his strongholds. You're launching the attack, you're picking its time and place. You're taking the initiative, you're overwhelming the Enemy.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Attack!

God , Children , Hell , Time

“Have you seen the fish that have been standing in front of the
opera in cutaways
for the last two days and nights..?
Ah ah ye great devils – ah ah ye keepers of bees and commandments
With a bow wow wow with a bow woe woe who does today not know
what our Father Homer wrote…”

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet

End of the World, Ende der Welt', 1919

Fish , Bee , Night

“So over violent, or over civil,
That every man with him was God or Devil.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 557.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

God

“What the devil do you mean Carruthers?”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 154.

“In the Middle Ages, everything bad was the work of the devil, everything good, the work of God. Today, the French see everything in reverse and blame the Germans for it.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Letter to Fr. Pastells (11 November 1892)

God , Age

“…the war between the Nazis and the Communists; the war of the non-God religions, waged with the weapons of the twentieth century. The most striking fact about the new religions was their similarity. They substituted the devil for God and hatred for love.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

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

Love , God , War , Religion

“And yet in this I desired, as far as I durst, that I might have full sight of Hell and Purgatory. But it was not my meaning to make proof of anything that belongeth to the Faith: for I believed soothfastly that Hell and Purgatory is for the same end that Holy Church teacheth, but my meaning was that I might have seen, for learning in all things that belong to my Faith: whereby I might live the more to God’s worship and to my profit.
But for my desire, I could of this right nought, save as it is aforesaid in the First Shewing, where I saw that the devil is reproved of God and endlessly condemned. In which sight I understood as to all creatures that are of the devil’s condition in this life, and therein end, that there is no more mention made of them afore God and all His Holy than of the devil, — notwithstanding that they be of mankind — whether they be christened or not.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 33

Life , God , Faith , Hell

“God sends meat, and the Devil sends cooks.”

John Taylor (1578–1653) English poet of the 16th and 17th centuries

God , Cooking

“He wanted a home desperately. He was close to the point where he would take a mattress in Hell if the Devil would lend him a pillow.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 14, “A Crown of Fire” (p. 342).

Home , Hell

“Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there;
And 'twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Pt. I, l. 1. Compare: "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii, section 4, Memb. 1, Subsect. 1.
The True-Born Englishman http://www.luminarium.org/editions/trueborn.htm (1701)

God , Housing