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The Devil's most devilish when respectable.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Aurora Leigh
- From his brimstone bed at break of day
- A walking the Devil is gone,
- To visit his snug little farm the earth,
- And see how his stock goes on.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Devil's Thoughts
When a man hurries, the devil smiles.
- 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, The True-Born Englishman
Satan’s successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.
When the Angels arrive, the devils leave.
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.
MILAN KUNDERA, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused.
JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD, "The Case of Beauvais," Back to God's Country and Other Stories
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "Young Goodman Brown"
An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case. God has written all the books.
SAMUEL BUTLER, Note Books
Many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.
We are all acquainted with demons, aren't we? Sometimes they are more subtle than the Devil in person. They are those things that clutch at us, strangle us, force us to obey them. They control us with great delight, and finally they own us. Demons are certainly as much around today as they were in Jesus' day. They are more subtle, perhaps, and so we think we have outgrown them. Because we call them by other names, we have a way of missing them. But there is still a great force surrounding us that tries to push us into what is not of God.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR, A Tree Full of Angels
The devil is a cross between a really good used-car salesman and a game-show host, but with a lot more style and charm. There's a little Cary Grant thrown in there too.
RAY WISE, American Way Magazine, May 1, 2009
The devil keeps man from good with a thousand machinations spewed from his belly, so that when a person sighs to do good, he pierces him with his shafts; and when he desires to embrace God with his whole heart in love, he subjects him to poisonous tribulations, seeking to pervert good work before God. And when a person seeks the viridity of virtue, the devil tells him that he does not know what he is doing, and he teaches him that he can set his own law for himself.
HILDEGARD OF BINDEN, letter to the Abbot, c. 1166
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