Devil

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The Devil is the name given to a supernatural entity, who, in most Western religions, is the central embodiment of evil. See also Satan.

He is as ready as he can wish...to devise as many ways as can be to deface and obscure God's glory.

Contents

[edit] Sourced

  • The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
  • The devil, you see, is that friend who never stays with us to the end.
    • Georges Bernanos, Monsieur Ouine (1943), translated by William S. Bush. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, p. 171
  • Every man for himself, his own ends, the devil for all.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section I. Memb, III.
  • The Devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section IV. Memb. I. Subsection III.
  • And bid the devil take the hin'most.
    • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto II, line 633. Burns, To a Haggis. John Fletcher, The Tragedy of Bouduca, Act IV, scene 2.
  • Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick
    (Though he gave his name to our Old Nick).
  • Here is the devil-and-all to pay.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • One is always wrong to open a conversation with the devil, for, however he goes about it, he always insists on having the last word.
    • André Gide, 1917, in Journals 1889–1949, translated by Justin O'Brien
  • Why should the devil have all the good tunes?
    • Rowland Hill, sermon, reported in Edward W. Broome, The Rev. Rowland Hill: Preacher and Wit (1881), p. 93, in the sentence: "He did not see any reason why the devil should have all rhe good tunes."
  • The Devil is an ass, I do acknowledge it.
    • Ben Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631), Act IV, scene 1.
  • It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it.
  • The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.
    • Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, no. 277/78 (March 31, 1909), translated in Thomas Szasz, Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry (1970), Chapter 8
  • And now I would ask a strange question: who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England that passeth all the rest in doing his office? I can tell for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; ye shall never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keepeth residence at all times; ye shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will he is ever at home; the diligentest preacher in all the realm; he is ever at his plough; no lording nor loitering can hinder him; he is ever applying his business, ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. And his office is to hinder religion, to maintain superstition, to set up idolatry, to teach all kind of popery. He is ready as he can be wished for to set forth his plough; to devise as many ways as can be to deface and obscure God's glory...O that our prelates would be as diligent to sow the corn of good doctrine as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel.
    • Hugh Latimer, "Sermon on the Plough'", 29 January 1548. (G. E. Corrie (ed.), Sermons by Hugh Latimer, sometime Bishop of Worcester, Martyr, 1555 (Cambridge University Press, 1844), pp. 70-1.)
  • It is Lucifer,
    The son of mystery;
    And since God suffers him to be,
    He, too, is God's minister,
    And labors for some good
    By us not understood.
  • Tell your master that if there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs, I would enter.
    • Martin Luther (April 16, 1521). See Bunsen's Life of Luther, p. 61.
  • Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
    And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
    And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
  • The infernal serpent; he it was whose guile,
    Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived
    The mother of mankind.
  • His form had yet not lost
    All his original brightness, nor appear'd
    Less than arch-angel ruined, and th' excess
    Of glory obscured.
  • From morn
    To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
    A summer's day; and with the setting sun
    Dropt from the zenith like a falling star.
  • Black it stood as night,
    Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
    And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
    The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
    Satan was now at hand.
  • Incens'd with indignation Satan stood
    Unterrified, and like a comet burn'd,
    That fires the length of Ophiucus huge
    In th' arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
    Shakes pestilence and war.
  • Abashed the Devil stood,
    And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
    Virtue in her own shape how lovely; saw
    And pined his loss.
  • Satan; so call him now, his former name
    Is heard no more in heaven.
  • Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
  • I charge thee, Satan, hous'd within this man,
    To yield possession to my holy prayers,
    And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight;
    I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven!
  • Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables.
  • This is a devil, and no monster; I will leave him; I have no long spoon.
  • God seeks comrades and claims love,
    The devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
  • We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.
    • Mark Twain, "Concerning the Jews", Harper's Magazine (September 1899)
  • A person [Satan] who has during all time maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.
    • Mark Twain, "Concerning the Jews", Harper's Magazine (September 1899)
  • Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk.
    • Tom Waits "Heartattack and Vine", Heartattack and Vine (1980)
  • Wow! I like that, see? Because that's the way the devil does it. Everytime you make an error, everytime you make a mistake and I mean it's nothing but a mistake; the first thing he says is 'if you are what you say you are', 'If you are a preacher', 'If you were a Christian'. That's the devil, everytime you hear it from somebody. Did you hear what I said? Everytime you hear somebody make a suggestion like that, remember that's not them, that's the devil! And I don't want to go too much further without telling you this: Before the devil even opens his mouth you ought already know who you are. It won't shake you, it won't bother you, because you already know who you are!"

[edit] Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 192-93.
  • Renounce the Devil and all his works.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Baptism of Infants.
  • Therefore it behooveth hire a full long spoon
    That shal ete with a feend.
    • Geoffrey Chaucer, The Squire's Tale, line 602. Same idea in George Meriton, Praise of Yorkshire Ale. Dekker, Batchelars' Banquet, Works, I. 170. (Grosart's ed.). Heywood, Proverbs, Part II, Chapter V. Kemp, Nine Days Wonder (1600). Marlowe, Jew of Malta, III, IV. Comedy of Errors, IV, III. 64. Tempest, II. 2.
  • Auch die Kultur, die alle Welt beleckt,
    Hat auf den Teufel sich erstreckt.
  • Nein, nein! Der Teufel ist ein Egoist
    Und thut nicht leicht um Gottes Willen,
    Was einem Andern nützlich ist.
    • No, no! The devil is an egotist,
      And is not apt, without why or wherefore,
      "For God's sake," others to assist.
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, I. 4. 124.
  • I call'd the devil, and he came,
    And with wonder his form did I closely scan;
    He is not ugly, and is not lame,
    But really a handsome and charming man.
    A man in the prime of life is the devil,
    Obliging, a man of the world, and civil;
    A diplomatist too, well skill'd in debate,
    He talks quite glibly of church and state.
  • When the devil drives, needs must. (Needs must when the devil drives.)
  • How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
    • Isaiah, XIV. 12.
  • What is got over the devil's back is spent under his belly.
    • Attributed to Isocrates by Alain-René Lesage, Gil Blas (1715-1735), Book III, Chapter X.
  • Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you.
    • James, IV. 7.
  • The king of terrors.
    • Job, XVIII. 14.
  • The devil, my friends, is a woman just now.
    'Tis a woman that reigns in Hell.
  • Swings the scaly horror of his folded tail.
  • Bid the Devil take the slowest.
  • Verflucht wer mit dem Teufel spielt.
    • Accursed be he who plays with the devil.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein's Tod, 1. 3. 64.
  • From his brimstone bed, at break of day,
    A-walking the Devil is gone,
    To look at his little snug farm of the world,
    And see how his stock went on.
    • Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Walk, Stanza 1. Title originally Devils' Thoughts. Coleridge assigns to Southey the first four stanzas. See his Sibylline Leaves. (1817), p. 98. Claim of Porson a hoax.
  • The Satanic school.

[edit] Unsourced

  • "And does evil like beauty,steal the soul by night?. And Satan himself as a beacon, come as an angel of light?" Steve Sayles
  • Though Satan should never be given undue prominence, it is important that the place given to him in Scripture be realised. No other individual, except the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is afforded so prominent a place in the Bible from its very beginning to its end, as the character whom we know as Satan, the Devil. Of no one else are we so minutely informed concerning his origin, his fall, his character and work, his influence, and his ultimate judgment and destiny. Heathen lands have been enveloped in the grossest darkness and basest superstitions and practices because they lack clear teachings concerning him which the scripture afford. We need not be "ignorant of his devices."
  • And lo, God said: Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me, and let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.
  • Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.
  • The greatest trick that Satan ever pulled was convincing the world that He was God.
  • Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.
  • If the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness
  • It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
  • They said God was on high and he controlled the world and therefore we must pray against Satan. Well, if God controls the world, he controls Satan. For me, religion was full of misstatements and reaches of logic that I just couldn't agree with.
  • This cumbersome concept that men call the beast; I will destroy it, my men need a feast. I am the blasphemer, I make your kind heel; Bring forth Satan and cleave him with steel. Worship God or the Devil... it's all the same. Religion is a haven for the weak and lame.
    • Gwar - Anti-Anti-Christ

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