Quotes about devil (934 quotes, page 7)

“Speak boldly, and speak truly, shame the devil.”

John Fletcher Wit Without Money

Act IV, scene 4.
Wit Without Money (c. 1614; published 1639)

“Faust felt like this. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come and Faustus must be damned … How long did he buy with the currency of his soul — ten years?”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (12) "It's Supposed To Be Automatic But Actually You Have To Press This Button"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Soul , Star , Time

“What is got over the Devil's back is spent under the belly.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 11.

“If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man — it is a man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Garfield's Words (1882)

Love

“Blue said, "I can't get in this car. Do you know what's happening behind me? I don't even want to look."
Henry said, "How about you give me the finger and shout at me now and withdraw with your principles?" He smiled winningly and held up three fingers. He counted to two with devil horns.
"This is incredibly unnecessary," Blue told him, but she could feel herself smiling.
"Life's a show," he replied. He counted one with his middle finger, and then his face melted into exaggerated shock.
Blue shouted, "Drop dead, you bastard!"
"FINE!" Henry screamed back, with slightly more hysteria than the role required. He attempted to squeal out of the lot, stopped to take off the parking brake, and then limped out more sedately."”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

pg 234
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven King (2016)

Life , Smile , Cars , Feeling

“Scampering as if the Devil drove them.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 62.

“If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

Country

“Thus it comes about that the endeavour of primitive people to make a clean sweep of all their troubles generally takes the form of a grand hunting out and expulsion of devils and ghosts. They think that if they can only shake off these their accursed tormentors, they will make a fresh start in life, happy and innocent; the tales of Eden and the old poetic golden age will come true again.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 56, The Public Expulsion of Evils.

Life , People , Age , Thinking

“And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd
For one fair female, lost him half the kind.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Theodore and Honoria, line 227.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He who cannot hate the devil cannot love God.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Wer den Teufel nicht hassen kann, der kann auch Gott nicht lieben.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Love , God , Hate

“The United States of America will become the United States of Banana. And Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.”

Giannina Braschi book United States of Banana

United States of Banana (2011)

War , Dogs , Democracy

“Ambiguity — the Devil's volleyball.”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

E=MO² (1985), A Fine How Ya Do

“Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain.”

Anthony Trollope book Phineas Finn

Ch. 72 http://books.google.com/books?id=Jy1MAAAAcAAJ&q=%22Money+is+neither+god+nor+devil+that+it+should+make+one+noble+and+another+vile+It+is+an+accident+and+if+honestly+possessed+may+pass+from+you+to+me+or+from+me+to+you+without+stain%22&pg=PA269#v=onepage, St. Paul's Magazine, April 1869 http://books.google.com/books?id=wkBJAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Money+is+neither+god+nor+devil+that+it+should+make+one+noble+and+another+vile+It+is+an+accident+and+if+honestly+possessed+may+pass+from+you+to+me+or+from+me+to+you+without+stain%22&pg=PA126#v=onepage
Phineas Finn (1869)

Money , God

“Doesn't matter now, devils who paint angels.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

The Vampire Lestat (1985)

Angels , Painting

“And know that all my joy, perfect, transcending sense, is given of Aiwaz, whom we call the Devil, whose name is Will, loud-uttered by cocaine, is Love.”

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

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

Love , Sense , Joy , Perfection

“Because I have seen hell, death and the devil, because I had to watch the madness of destruction, because I was one of the many horses pulling the wagon and couldn't escape left or right because of the will of the driver, I now feel called upon and have the desire to tell what happened.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

CBC report (2000)

Death , Feeling , Hell , Horse

“The confusion of spirit and body is quite understandable in a culture where spirit is concretized in magnificent skyscrapers, where cathedrals have become museums for tourists, where woman-flesh-devil are associated, and nature is raped for any deplorable excuse. […] Dieting with fierce will-power is the masculine route; dieting with love of her own nature is the feminine. Her only real hope is to care for her own body and experience it as the vessel through which her Self may be born.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980), p. 100

Love , Hope , Understanding , Nature

“If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy, as God and the devil. … No bishop, no King!”

James I of England (1566–1625) king during union of English and Scottish crowns

God

“What is the market place? Is it the secular city? Is it the factual market place, that is to say the urban inner city? Is it suburbia where all the supermarkets are? No. The market place is simply the soul of man. It is the place where man trades his soul either to God or to the devil or to the 'in between', with indifference, tepidity and complacency.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"Living the Mandate", p. 40
The last part of the quote, about those who trade their souls to the 'in between', alludes to Rev 3:15-16.
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

God , Soul , Indifference

“As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.
Here was the man who had Tarzan's title, and Tarzan's estates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved — the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man's life.
It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and — it would take them away from Jane Porter also. "I say, old man," cried Clayton, "I haven't had a chance to thank you for all you've done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full saving our lives in Africa and here.
"I'm awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted. I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your environment.
"If it's any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?"”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

"I was born there," said Tarzan, quietly. "My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn't tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was."
Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 28 : Conclusion

Love , Life , Business , Chance

“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train…”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Opening Chapter
Naked Lunch (1959)

Feeling , Training

“I think that public opinion today likes a certain amount of pageantry. It is a great mistake to make government too dull. That, I think, was the fault of the German Republic after the First World War. They were very drab and dull; the trouble was that they let the devil get all the best tunes. Therefore, we on this side of the Committee believe that it is right to have a certain amount of pageantry, because it pleases people, and it also counteracts a tendency to other forms of excitement.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1952/jul/09/civil-list#column_1328 in the House of Commons (9 July 1952) on the civil list
1950s

War , People , World , Thinking

“Could've sworn I heard you say amen this morning, showing some kind of sign that you believe
Did it fall from your tongue without warning or just another trick to fall from your sleeve?
Did I hear you say that you believe in angels? I guess I bring the devil out in you.
But we can both remove our halos 'cause even an angel needs love too.
Even angels need love too.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

The Woman in You.
Song lyrics, Burn to Shine (1999)

Love , Angels

“The church has become a more…exclusive club since the founder’s day, it’s clear. No doubt the Devil is more hospitable.”

Tim Powers book The Stress of Her Regard

Source: The Stress of Her Regard (1989), Chapter 10 (p. 129)

“I sing for God, our Devil, our Lord, Aiwaz.”

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

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 238

God , Singing

“The absurd and legendary devil is the enigma of the Church.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (18 October 1890)
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (1890 and 1891)

“They must needs go whom the Devil drives.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book IV, Ch. 4.

“He is cunning, he is mighty, he never rests, he is ever plotting the downfall of the child of God; and if the child of God relaxes in prayer the Devil will succeed in ensnaring him.”

R. A. Torrey (1856–1928) American writer

Power and Peace in Prayer (1924)

God

““Do you believe in angels, Robard?” he asked faintly.
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s alright then, she must be a devil. Can deal with those, y’know.””

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 7, “A Semiotic War” (p. 159)

Angels

“It is not because Angels are Holier than Men or Devils that makes them Angels but because they do not Expect Holiness from one another but from God only”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

1810s
Source: A Vision of the Last Judgment

Men , God , Angels

“Pride is the master sin of the devil.”

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) American priest

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 484.

“It is much more trying to be continually tormented by evil men than by devils.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From, Light on Carmel: An Anthology from the Works of Brother John of Saint Samson, O.Carm.

Men , Evil

“God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.”

Thomas Deloney (1543–1600) English poet, novelist, and composer

Originally in A. Borde Dietary of Health xi. (1542 )
Used and popularised by Deloney in 1574. Dictionary of Proverbs http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7PMZJqSR4sAC&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=god+sends+meat+deloney&source=bl&ots=ASloRAQyP1&sig=xQyq5EwO7MuEouEj2kHOFGMvuE8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UW_3UqP3DYGGhQfrnIGwBQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=god%20sends%20meat%20deloney&f=false

God , Cooking

“I took some bad acid in November of 1965, and the after effect left me crazy and helpless for six months. My mind would drift into a place that was very electrical and crackly, filled with harsh, abrasive, low grade, cartoony, tawdry carnival visions. There was a nightmarish mechanical aspect to everyday life. My ego was so shattered, so fragmented that it didn't get in the way during what was the most unself-conscious period of my life. I was kind of on automatic pilot and was still constantly drawing. Most of my popular characters—Mr. Natural, Flaky Foont, Angelfood McSpade, Eggs Ackley, The Snoid, The Vulture Demonesses, Av' n' Gar, Shuman the Human, the Truckin' guys, Devil Girl—all suddenly appeared in the drawings in my sketchbook in this period, early 1966. Amazing! I was relieved when it was finally over, but I also immediately missed the egoless state of that strange interlude. LSD put me somewhere else. I wasn't sure where. All I know is, it was a strange place. Psychedelic drugs broke me out of my social programming. It was a good thing for me, traumatic though, and I may have been permanently damaged by the whole thing, I'm not sure. I see LSD as a positive, important life experience for me, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.”

Robert Crumb (1943) American cartoonist

The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 132

Life , Way , Guy , Girl

“Why not? What is to hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious,—that is to say, chaotic, _un_governed; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity of struggling to unfold the same out of him.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

God , Help , Heart

“Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic.
Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Barks and Purrs

Love , Dogs , Forgiveness

“The devil…the prowde spirit…cannot endure to be mocked.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Thomas More, quoted at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters
Misattributed

“…Carlo delivered what began as a panegyric and ended as an anathema…. His brother…regarded by the stupid and the wicked as a sort of imbecilic weakness, an infantile inability to come to terms with the sophisticated world of affairs. Because he was just he was to be seen as a quixotic madman, because he was virtuous he was to be taken for a eunuch, because he was magnanimous he was to be gulled and derided…. ‘There are many here today in this great modern temple of the Lord who have come not out of the piety of friendship or respect but following sickening forms of hypocritical convention, and among these are some that are soiled, bemerded, stinking with wealth amassed unjustly, wealth made out of torture and murder and the exploitation of human frailty, a precarious wealth as insubstantial as fairy gold, demon gold rather, that will crumble into dust at the dawn of the recovery of sanity and virtue by a great nation temporarily demented, an angelic land to its immigrants that is now set upon by the devils of greed, stupidity and madness…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

Friendship , Stupidity , World , Angels

“Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.”

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) French diplomat

Noir comme le diable, chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l'amour.
frequently misattributed to Talleyrand, no primary source exists, its not his style of speech, and he famously drank tea not coffee.
Misattributed

Love , Angels , Hell

“I'm not going to vote. I won't vote for a Catholic and I won't vote for a damned Republican. Maybe I've said that before. My ancestors were all Catholic and not very far back. And I have reason to hate the church.
I feel a curious kinship, though, with the Middle Ages. I have been more successful in selling tales laid in that period of time, than in any other. Truth it was an epoch for strange writers. Witches and werewolves, alchemists and necromancers, haunted the brains of those strange savage people, barbaric children that they were, and the only thing which was never believed was the truth. Those sons of the old pagan tribes were wrought upon by priest and monk, and they brought all their demons from their mythology and accepted all the demons of the new creed also, turning their old gods into devils. The slight knowledge which filtered through the monastaries from the ancient sources of decayed Greece and fallen Rome, was so distorted and perverted that by the time it reached the people, it resembled some monstrous legend. And the vague minded savages further garbed it in heathen garments. Oh, a brave time, by Satan! Any smooth rogue could swindle his way through life, as he can today, but then there was pageantry and high illusion and vanity, and the beloved tinsel of glory without which life is not worth living.
I hate the devotees of great wealth but I enjoy seeing the splendor that wealth can buy. And if I were wealthy, I'd live in a place with marble walls and marble floors, lapis lazulis ceilings and cloth-of-gold and I would have silver fountains in the courts, flinging an everlasting sheen of sparkling water in the air. Soft low music should breathe forever through the rooms and slim tigerish girls should glide through on softly falling feet, serving all the wants of me and my guests; girls with white bare limbs like molten gold and soft dreamy eyes.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Harold Preece (received October 20, 1928)
Letters

Life , God , Hate , Children

“Each for himself is still the rule
We learn it when we go to school—
The devil take the hindmost, O!”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

In the Great Metropolis http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/greatmetropolis.html, st. 1.

School , Learning

“God became a man, granted. The devil became a woman.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Dieu s'est fait homme; soit. Le diable s'est fait femme!
Ruy Blas (1838), Act II, Scene V http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruy_Blas#ACTE_2_SCENE_5

God

“(Devil describes Hell) It's like you go to a Van Halen concert and you're the oldest one there, and there's a mix-up in the tickets, and you have to stand for the whole thing and it's hot and the kid next to you loses his lunch on your shoe.... I know.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

You thought it was going to be witty and Noel Cowardish.
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 133

Shoe , Hell

“I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"A horse is a safer bet than the trains", Daily Telegraph, 3 July 2003, p. 22.
2000s, 2003

Training

“I like ejaculatory prayer; it reaches heaven before the devil can get a shot at it.”

Rowland Hill (preacher) (1744–1833) British preacher

P. 470.

“I sat on my bed and I said to God: You've taken her, but you haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair (1951)

Love , God , Hate , Peace

“And when the devil hath seen that they have set so little by him, after certain essays, made in such times as he thought most fitting, he hath given that temptation quite over. And this he doth not only because the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked, but also lest, with much tempting the man to the sin to which he could not in conclusion bring him, he should much increase his merit.”

Thomas More (1478–1535) English Renaissance humanist

Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation (1553), Book Two, Section XVI

Time

“There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are-the quicker to take fright-the more violent they pray that every storm will be … Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms-they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

People , Nature , Appearance , Painting

“Imagine a book of unexplained mysteries written by a contemporary of Shakespeare. It might include the mystery of the falling stars that sweep through the sky foretelling disaster; the mystery of the Kraken, the giant sea devil with 50-foot tentacles; the mystery of monster bones, sometimes found in caves or on beaches. Such a book would be a curious mixture of truth and absurdity, fact and legend. We would all feel superior as we turned its pages and murmured: "Of course, they didn't know about comets and giant squids and dinosaurs." If this book should happen to find its way into the hands of our remote descendants, they may smile pityingly and say: "It's incredible to think that they knew nothing about epsilon fields or multiple psychic feedback or cross gravitational energies. They didn't even know about the ineluctability of time."”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

But let us hope that such a descendant is in a charitable mood, and might add: "And yet they managed to ask a few of the right questions."
Source: Enigmas and Mysteries (1976), p. 142

Truth , Books , Smile , Hope

“Devils may be nothing but beings intent on their purpose, which now happens to collide with yours.”

Fritz Leiber book The Wanderer

Source: The Wanderer (1964), Chapter 16 (p. 113).

“Words are devils, which may lead a man to pick up a sword; but they can never teach him to use it.”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

A saying by Nyekhen http://www.almeopedia.com/Nyekhen, an early Almean general who became a culture hero
Fictional sayings

“General Mercer writes me the Virginia troops are coming on. They are now at Trenton. He proposes an attack on Staten Island; but the motions of the enemy are such I think it necessary for them to come forward as fast as possible. On York Island, the enemy have taken possession of the hill, next to Spiten Devil. I think they will not be able to penetrate any farther. There appears to be about fifteen hundred of them.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (7 October 1776)

Thinking , Appearance

“Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On Machiavelli http://www.bartleby.com/27/24.html (1827)

“I was a whole new human being, he said of this transformation. I liked people, they liked me. It was like an exorcism, kicking the devil outta me!”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times"

People

“They say that the Devil is a charming man.
And just like you I bet he can dance.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Sensual World (1989)

Dance

“If this “sacred” book teaches man to enslave his brother, it is not inspired. A god who would establish slavery is as cruel and heartless as any devil could be.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God , Books

“Don't be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn't allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 16

God , Evil , Parting

“The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work on the proceeds, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Art and Letters.
Afterthoughts (1931)

Money

“The first evil choice or act is linked to the second; and each one to the one that follows, both by the tendency of our evil nature and by the power of habit, which holds us as by a destiny. – As Lessing says, 'Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 152.

Nature , Evil

“Sometimes I can tell the greatness of my mission with God by the resistance I am met with by the Devil.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 144

God

“Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act I
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

God , Law , Thinking , Country

“I've got a lot of white associates. Elijah Muhammad, is the one who preached that the white man of America, number one, is the Devil. He's been preaching — he never mentioned England. England's people have never lynched us, raped us, castrated us, tarred and feathered us, burned us up, pulled our sockets apart, stick knives in pregnant women's stomachs, enslaved us, rob us of our names, our knowledge, our — Elijah Mohammad's been preaching that the white man of America – God taught him – is the blue-eyed, blond-headed Devil! No good in him, no justice, he's gonna be destroyed! His rule is over. He is the Devil!”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

interview with Michael Parkinson (1974), quoted in Adam Lusher, " 'The white man is the devil' – what the Nation of Islam taught Muhammad Ali https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/muhammad-ali-nation-of-islam-michael-parkinson-interview-who-were-elijah-muhammad-a7066301.html", _The Independent_ (June 5, 2016)

Women , God , People , Justice

“I will not live in the same rooms as the Borgias lived. He [Pope Alexander VI] desecrated the Holy Church as none before. He usurped the papal power by the devil's aid, and I forbid under the pain of excommunication anyone to speak or think of Borgia again. His name and memory must be forgotten. It must be crossed out of every document ad memorial. His reign must be obliterated. All paintings made of the Borgias or for them must be covered over with black crepe. All the tombs of the Borgias must be opened and their bodies sent back to where they belong — to Spain.”

Pope Julius II (1443–1513) pope from 1503 to 1513

As quoted in Sex Lives of the Popes (1996) by Nigel Cawthorne, p. 219

Pain , Thinking , Memory , Painting

“I see no faults in the Church, and therefore let me be resurrected with the Saints, whether I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, or go to any other place. And if we go to hell, we will turn the devils out of doors and make a heaven of it. Where this people are, there is good society. What do we care where we are, if the society be good? I don't care what a man's character is; if he's my friend—a true friend, I will be a friend to him, and preach the Gospel of salvation to him, and give him good counsel, helping him out of his difficulties.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 5:517 (23 July 1843)
1840s

People , Hell , Help

“In reality, a person questioning the existence of the Satanic conspiracy is merely pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. In that case, one can understand why the emperor's tailors get upset and suggest the person doing the pointing is a tool of the devil. Then the question comes down to one of whether the crowd will believe the evidence they have before them, or if they will buy into the tailors' fantasies.”

Michael A. Stackpole (1957) science fiction author

[Stackpole, http://members.tripod.com/~limsk/pulling.htm, "The Pulling Report", 2007-05-27]

Understanding , Question , Reality , Personality

“Avoid all controversy in preaching, talking, or writing; preach nothing down but the devil, and nothing up but Jesus Christ.”

John Berridge (1716–1793) British priest

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 480.

Christ

“Instantly you should awaken, walk in the right way, keep aloof from all abomination and idolatry, forsake false prophets, preachers and priests; and seek the true teachers, sacraments and divine service; for a true, sincere, Christian faith cannot be idle; but it changes, renews, purifies, sanctifies and justifies more and more; it makes joyous and glad, for by faith it knows that hell, devil, sin and death, are conquered through Christ, and that grace, mercy, and redemption from sin and eternal life, are acquired through him.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.157

Life , Death , Faith , Way

“The world and the devil fight against us believers, because we will not wear their mask of hypocrisy, under which gross wickedness may be committed.”

Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803–1874) Dutch minister

Source: Sermons on the First Epistle of Peter (1855), p. 7

World , Fight

“Comets, earthquakes, volcanoes, and northern lights (in the night,) with many other extraordinary phenomena or appearances intimidate weak minds, and are by them thought to be miraculous, although they undoubtedly have their proper natural causes, which have been in a great measure discovered. Jack-with-a-lantern is a frightful appearance to some people, but not so much as the imaginary specter. But of all the scarecrows which have made human nature tremble, the devil has been chief; his family is said to be very numerous, consisting of "legions," with which he has kept our world in a terrible uproar.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. VI Section III - Rare and Wonderful Phenomena no evidence of Miracles, nor are Diabolical Spirits able to effect them, or Superstitious Traditions to confirm them, nor can Ancient Miracles prove Recent Revelations

People , World , Family , Nature

“Money is the devil's dung.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

Quoted in Pope Francis, To representatives of the Confederation of Italian Cooperatives http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/february/documents/papa-francesco_20150228_confcooperative.html, 28 February 2015

Money

“That my old bitter heart was pierced in this black doom,
That foreign devils have made our land a tomb,
That the sun that was Munster's glory has gone down
Has made me a beggar before you, Valentine Brown.”

Egan O'Rahilly (1670–1726) Irish poet

"Valentine Brown", as quoted in An Anthology of Irish Literature (1954), p. 239
Variant translation:
Because all night my mind inclines to wander and to rave,
Because the English dogs have made Ireland a green grave,
Because all of Munster's glory is daily trampled down,
I have traveled far to meet you, Valentine Brown.

Sun , Heart

“If you were to believe all the old, degenerate German legends, there’s a Grail in every castle, a Charlemagne or an Arthur under every mound! There not a noble house without at least one werewolf offspring or a younger son who’s made a pact with the Devil, an uncle practising the profane arts of alchemy, a vampirical grandfather, a mad monk, a ruined abbey in the grounds where witches meet, an incarcerated lunatic (or heiress—or both), an infanticide or two (and a patricide), and, of course, a family ghost.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 263)

Family , Art , Housing , Madness

“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils' party without knowing it.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Note to The Voice of the Devil
1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)

God , Angels , Hell

“Luis Miguel had the pride of the devil and a feeling of absolute superiority that was justified in many things. He had said so long that he was the best that he really believed it. He had to believe it to go on. It was not just something he believed. It was his belief.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Luis Miguel Dominguin was another famous bullfighter and friend of Hemingway's.
Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 10

Feeling

“I am glad that you admit that a bad God is worse than no God. If so, the atheist is far better than the believer in Jehovah, and far better than the believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ—because I am perfectly satisfied that none but a bad God would threaten to say to any human soul, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” So that, before any Christian can be better than an atheist, he must reform his God.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Answer to Lyman Abbott (unfinished), responding to Abbott, Lyman. "Flaws in Ingersollism." The North American Review 150, no. 401 (1890): 446-457.

God , Angels , Soul , Christ

“It's past parsons to console us:
No, nor no doctor fetch for me:
I can die without my bolus;
Two of a trade, lass, never agree!
Parson and Doctor!--don't they love rarely
Fighting the devil in other men's fields!
Stand up yourself and match him fairly:
Then see how the rascal yields!”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Juggling Jerry, st. 9 (1859).

Love , Men , Past , Fight

“The true realist is he who believes in both God and the Devil, and is prepared to attempt, with humility, to sort out some corner of the extraordinary tangle of their works which is our world. He cannot use his feeling alone, he must use his intellect.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

God , World , Feeling

“Did you sleep well last night?” asked Glorian.
“Yes, I suppose,” said Dore, “although I was trouble by a strange dream.”
“Oh? Perhaps it was some sort of omen. Tell me of it.”
“Certainly,” said Dore. “I dreamed of a domino.”
“Just one?”
“Yes, just the one. All night. No people or sounds in the dream, just the domino. The five-three.”
“Wonderful!” cried Glorian. “The five-three is a lucky little devil. It presages victory after hardships. It confirms your inner ambition, but counsels you to avoid extremes, to temper pleasure with practicality. Advances in music, art, and drama are indicated. Rely on good manners and good taste. The five-three is a domino of hope and good news.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

“Are you making that up?” said Dore suspiciously.
Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 6 “A Perilous Scheme” (p. 111).

People , Pleasure , Dreams , Hope

“David is the song upon God's lips,
And Our Lady is the goblet that He sips:
And Gabriel's the breath of His command,
But Saint Michael is the sword in God's right hand. The Ivory Tower is fair to see,
And may her walls encompass me!
But when the Devil comes with the thunder of his might,
Saint Michael, show me how to fight!”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), The Thorn

God , Fight

“The world! It is a word capable of as diverse interpretations or misinterpretations as the thing itself — a thing by various people supposed to belong to heaven, man, or the devil, or alternatively to all three.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 9

People , World

“If we are correct in placing the beginning of the Time of the End at 1799, we should expect that there the falling into the error of church and state union would measurably cease, though it might require long years for the full recovery out of that snare of the devil. Looking back, we find that facts exactly correspond with this. Since that date there have been separations between empires and churches, but no new unions. Really, this date marks a new reformation on a more substantial basis. The influence of the Papacy over the kingdoms of Europe had previously been so great that its curses were dreaded by the nations as a withering blight, and its blessings desired for national prosperity. When Protestants separated from Papacy, they were received by the world as being merely a less corrupt substitute for the Papacy; and their favor, advice or sanction was often very similarly sought. But when Napoleon boldly ignored both the blessings and the curses of Papacy, and yet prospered phenomenally, his course not only greatly weakened the Papal influence of the various Protestant systems, in matters civil and political - which influence has grown very strong in two and a half centuries.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 49.

World , Error , Strong , Time

“The demand for equality and identity arises precisely in order to avoid that fear, that feeling of inferiority. Nobody is better, nobody is superior, nobody feels challenged, everybody is "safe." Furthermore, if identity, if sameness has been achieved, then the other person's actions and reactions can be forecast. With no (disagreeable) surprises, a warm herd feeling of brotherhood emerges. These sentiments -- this rejection of quality (which ineluctably differs from person to person) -- explain much concerning the spirit of the mass movements of the last two hundred years. Simone Weil has told us that the "I" comes from the flesh, but "we" comes from the devil.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 5

Fear , Feeling , Personality

“There was a laughing devil in his sneer.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Canto I, stanza 9.
The Corsair (1814)

“The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

The Rickover Effect (1992)

“Imagine that leader of all the enemy, in that great plain of Babylon, sitting on a sort of throne of smoking flame, a horrible and terrifying sight. Watch him calling together countless devils, to despatch them into different cities till the whole world is covered, forgetting no province or locality, no class or single individual.”

Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) Catholic Saint, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)

No. 140-141.
Spiritual Exercises (1548)

World , Imagination , Forgetting

“But I saw not Christ laugh. For I understood that we may laugh in comforting of ourselves and joying in God for that the devil is overcome. And when I saw Him scorn his malice, it was by leading of mine understanding into our Lord: that is to say, it was an inward shewing of verity, without changing of look. For, as to my sight, it is a worshipful property of God’s that is ever the same.”

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

The Fifth Revelation, Chapter 13

God , Understanding , Change , Joy

“A long time ago they brought me here eastward over the heath, along with one Jón Þeófílusson from the Westfjörds, who was burned after the devil testified against him. And I've got one thing to say about that: a ladies' man like him, who could sit up in the gables an entire night holding on to a Blusterer while his girl was in bed with another man, didn't deserve any better, and that's why I told him so many times in the black pit, 'You'll definitely be burned.'”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

Girl , Night , Time

“In these days the angel of topology and the devil of abstract algebra fight for the soul of each individual mathematical domain.”

Hermann Weyl Invariants

Weyl, Hermann. Invariants. Duke Math. J. 5 (1939), no. 3, 489--502. doi:10.1215/S0012-7094-39-00540-5. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.dmj/1077491405.

Angels , Soul , Mathematics , Fight

“With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

The Beatles Anthology (2000)

Life , God , People , Religion

“The Devil was sick,—the Devil a monk would be;
The Devil was well,—the devil a monk was he.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 24.

“The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils.
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Beauty , Spring , Thinking , Passion

“In Germany the common people are peace-loving, … The Devil has put his representative Hitler in control, a man who is of unsound mind, cruel, malicious and ruthless... He cruelly persecutes the Jews because they were once Jehovah’s covenant people and bore the name of Jehovah, and because Christ Jesus was a Jew.”

Joseph Franklin Rutherford (1869–1942) American judge

[The Evils of Nazism Exposed, Awake!, 1995]

Love , People , Peace , Christ

“I’m telling you, the Devil is very smart. He’s not going to come out with the horns and the tail. He’s going to come in as the slickest car salesman you ever saw – and I’ve seen some pretty slick pastors on TV. Now that’s not to say they’re all like that. … But every time I hear something that goes a little left of center, I go, ‘What? What was that?’ You know, too much healing on TV, I don’t know about that. That’s showbiz I think.”

Alice Cooper (1948) American rock singer, songwriter and musician

"Alice Cooper, Christian: ‘The World Belongs to Satan’" https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/alice-cooper-christian-world-belongs-satan Michael W. Chapman, CNSNews.com, December 31, 2014.

Cars , Thinking , Time

“Isocrates was in the right to insinuate, in his elegant Greek expression, that what is got over the Devil's back is spent under his belly.”

Alain-René Lesage book Gil Blas

Book VIII, ch. 9. Compare: "What is got over the Devil's back is spent under the belly", François Rabelais, Works, Book V, ch. 11.
Gil Blas (1715-1735)