Devil Attitude Quotes

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If you find yourself about to complain, think of your many blessings and rejoice! Don't give the devil a ride today, because then he'll want to drive full-time. So, kick his attitude of complaining spirit out of your blessed zone. Don't give the devil NOTHING!!
Anita R. Sneed-Carter
The universe runs on the principle that one who can exert the most evil on other creatures runs the show.
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
Don’t push me, princess. (Zarek) Oooo. Next thing you’ll be talking like the Incredible Hulk. ‘Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.’ You’re not scary to me, Mr. Zarek. So you can just check the attitude at the door and play nice while you’re here. (Astrid) If you want nice, baby, play with your fucking dog. When you’re ready to play with a man, then call me. (Zarek)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are.
Oswald Chambers
You know, I’ve never understood it. They make a deal with the devil herself and then expect me to bail them out of every minor scrape. Then when I show up to help them, they cop an attitude and tell me to blow. So if I’m selfish for wanting four days a year to be left alone, then I’m just a selfish bastard. Sue me. (Acheron)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Stroke of Midnight)
The very quality of your life, whether you love it or hate it, is based upon how thankful you are toward God. It is one's attitude that determines whether life unfolds into a place of blessedness or wretchedness. Indeed, looking at the same rose bush, some people complain that the roses have thorns while others rejoice that some thorns come with roses. It all depends on your perspective. This is the only life you will have before you enter eternity. If you want to find joy, you must first find thankfulness. Indeed, the one who is thankful for even a little enjoys much. But the unappreciative soul is always miserable, always complaining. He lives outside the shelter of the Most High God. Perhaps the worst enemy we have is not the devil but our own tongue. James tells us, "The tongue is set among our members as that which . . . sets on fire the course of our life" (James 3:6). He goes on to say this fire is ignited by hell. Consider: with our own words we can enter the spirit of heaven or the agonies of hell! It is hell with its punishments, torments and misery that controls the life of the grumbler and complainer! Paul expands this thought in 1 Corinthians 10:10, where he reminds us of the Jews who "grumble[d] . . . and were destroyed by the destroyer." The fact is, every time we open up to grumbling and complaining, the quality of our life is reduced proportionally -- a destroyer is bringing our life to ruin! People often ask me, "What is the ruling demon over our church or city?" They expect me to answer with the ancient Aramaic or Phoenician name of a fallen angel. What I usually tell them is a lot more practical: one of the most pervasive evil influences over our nation is ingratitude! Do not minimize the strength and cunning of this enemy! Paul said that the Jews who grumbled and complained during their difficult circumstances were "destroyed by the destroyer." Who was this destroyer? If you insist on discerning an ancient world ruler, one of the most powerful spirits mentioned in the Bible is Abaddon, whose Greek name is Apollyon. It means "destroyer" (Rev. 9:11). Paul said the Jews were destroyed by this spirit. In other words, when we are complaining or unthankful, we open the door to the destroyer, Abaddon, the demon king over the abyss of hell! In the Presence of God Multitudes in our nation have become specialists in the "science of misery." They are experts -- moral accountants who can, in a moment, tally all the wrongs society has ever done to them or their group. I have never talked with one of these people who was happy, blessed or content about anything. They expect an imperfect world to treat them perfectly. Truly, there are people in this wounded country of ours who need special attention. However, most of us simply need to repent of ingratitude, for it is ingratitude itself that is keeping wounds alive! We simply need to forgive the wrongs of the past and become thankful for what we have in the present. The moment we become grateful, we actually begin to ascend spiritually into the presence of God. The psalmist wrote, "Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing. . . . Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting and His faithfulness to all generations" (Psalm 100:2, 4-5). It does not matter what your circumstances are; the instant you begin to thank God, even though your situation has not changed, you begin to change. The key that unlocks the gates of heaven is a thankful heart. Entrance into the courts of God comes as you simply begin to praise the Lord.
Francis Frangipane
Nobody is responsible for your sorrows and poverty, not even the devil. It is the work of the enemies of time that lives in some men, and their names are, 'Laziness and Procrastination'.
Michael Bassey Johnson
We must realize that we are all, like Dr. Faust, ready to accept the devil's inducements. The devil is in each one of us in the form of an ego that promises the fulfillment of desire on condition that we become subservient to its striving to dominate. The domination of the personality by the ego is a diabolical perversion of the nature of man. The ego was never intended to be the master of the body, but its loyal and obedient servant. The body, as opposed to the ego, desires pleasure, not power. Bodily pleasure is the source from which all our good feelings and good thinking stems. If the bodily pleasure of an individual is destroyed, he becomes an angry, frustrated, and hateful person. His thinking becomes distorted, and his creative potential is lost. He develops self-destructive attitudes.
Alexander Lowen (Pleasure: A Creative Approach To Life)
The Bible attitude is not that God sends sickness or that sickness is of the devil, but that sickness is a fact usable by both God and the devil.
Oswald Chambers (Philosophy of Sin)
I loved her attitude and her anger, because I was always too warm and I needed the ice. It made me smile.
Penelope Douglas (Nightfall (Devil's Night, #4))
Your mind is your bitch,” he says. “The truth is you can teach it to do anything. You have to program your brain to your commands, not other people’s.
Miley Styles (I See The Devil)
...The life of the parents is the only thing that makes good children. Parents should be very patient and ‘saintlike’ to their children. They should truly love their children. And the children will share this love! For the bad attitude of the children, says father Porphyrios, the ones who are usually responsible for it are their parents themselves. The parents don’t help their children by lecturing them and repeating to them ‘advices’, or by making them obeying strict rules in order to impose discipline. If the parents do not become ‘saints’ and truly love their children and if they don’t struggle for it, then they make a huge mistake. With their wrong and/or negative attitude the parents convey to their children their negative feelings. Then their children become reactive and insecure not only to their home, but to the society as well...
Elder Porphyrios
There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon (Crypto, #1))
Be the Kind of Woman that when Your Feet Hit the Floor Each Morning, the Devil Says, ‘Oh Crap, She’s Up!
Anonymous
Those who focus their lives on uncovering the devil’s plans without regard for heaven’s plans can often develop a defeatist attitude toward the Christian life.
Peter Goodgame (The Second Coming of the Antichrist)
Enemy from within is always worst than outside devils.
Satyaankith
The years that had passed had displayed vividly before our eyes the fickleness of human attitudes.
Lion Feuchtwanger (The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940)
He was incorrigible, yet you can’t help but love him. His devil-may-care attitude, his brash nature and his vivaciousness aligned with his self-assertive and fearless nature gave birth to a Star who most people will, never, ever see the likes of. People like Sixteen-String Jack are wild, untameable and impossible to forget.
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
Lucky Tyler: "Yeah, you're here, looking more like the preacher's wife come calling than an overnight alibi. Who's gonna believe I tumbled you?" The devil in him was kicking up his heels, goading him to say things he knew damn well would rub her the wrong way. But he felt he was justified in being ornery. He didn't particularly like her attitude either. Devon Haines:"What did you expect me to wear? A negligee?" Lucky Tyler: "I----
Sandra Brown (Texas! Lucky (Texas! Tyler Family Saga, #1))
...the ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus it is necessary to make a decisive choice. Whether, under such conditions, science is a worth while 'vocation' for somebody, and whether science itself has an objectively valuable 'vocation' are again value judgments about which nothing can be said in the lecture-room. To affirm the value of science is a presupposition for teaching there. I personally by my very work answer in the affirmative, and I also do so from precisely the standpoint that hates intellectualism as the worst devil, as youth does today, or usually only fancies it does. In that case the word holds for these youths: 'Mind you, the devil is old; grow old to understand him.' This does not mean age in the sense of the birth certificate. It means that if one wishes to settle with this devil, one must not take flight before him as so many like to do nowadays. First of all, one has to see the devil's ways to the end in order to realize his power and his limitations.
Max Weber (From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology)
A man's features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for fulfilment and which his fears demand for their protection of prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. If he is afraid, then he must be feared; if he desires, then he must be desired. It is a screen to hide his mind's nakedness.
Eric Ambler (The Mask of Dimitrios (Charles Latimer, #1))
Boredom is the Devil's delight.
Lindsey Rietzsch (The Happy Lady)
I don't imagine book elitists as my audience when writing. I dream about teachers, morticians and garbage men instead.
Justin Alcala (The Devil in the Wide City (The Plenty Dreadful Series #1))
ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.
Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
The Scamp’s devil-may-care attitude often means that he or she is sexually desirable to other people
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
The tangible and factual components of reality along with the intangible strands of memory and imagination constitute the framework that houses our vital life force. A person is likewise composed of contradictory and complementary forces of pain and pleasure, darkness and lightness, and clashing and harmonizing bands of thoughts and feelings. The web and root of all persons consists of both the expressible and the unsayable. Who has not held imaginary conversations with gods, devils, and spirits? Persons whom enthusiastically cultivate an inner life, ardently experience the quick of nature, and willingly immerse themselves in all aspects of everyday living will experience renewal. Analogous to the heat source of fire, we need the spark of desire to fuel our hearts and the spirit of the breeze to spread our heart songs.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
What kind of soldier are you that you’re going to just sit in a cell while the world is thrown into chaos? Do you not understand what could happen if those weapons fall into the wrong hands? How could you be so selfish? (Syd) I’m selfish? Look, Agent Westbrook, your daddy’s a Boston stockbroker. I’m a death broker. I’m sure you don’t lecture Daddy on finance, so don’t even try to lecture me on assassination politics. I know all about them. Some bureaucratic ass-wipe sitting in a pristine office that’s totally isolated from the rest of the world decides the son of King Oomp-Loomp is a threat. He then hands down orders to people like me to go off King Oomp-Loompa’s son. Like an idiot, I do what he says without question. I hunt my target down, using information that is mostly bullshit and unreliable, gathered by someone like you who assured me it was correct as the time. But hey, if it changes minute by minute, and God forbid we pass that along to you. So me and my spotter lie in the grass, sand, or snow for days on end, cramped and hungry, never able to move more than a millimeter an hour until I have that one perfect shot I’ve been waiting for days. I take it, and then we lie there like pieces of dirt until we can inch our way back to safety, where hopefully the helicopter team will remember that they were supposed to retrieve us. Have you any idea of the nerves it takes to do what I do? To lie there on the ground while other armed men search for you? Have them step on you and not be able to even breathe or wince because if you do, it’s not only your life, but the life of your spotter? Do you know what it’s like to have the brains of your best friend spayed into your face and not be able to render aid to him because you know he’s dead and if you do, you’ll be killed too? I have been into the bowels of hell and back, Miz Westbrook. I have stared down the devil and made him sweat. So don’t tell me I don’t take this seriously. (Steele)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1))
When I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer's attitude toward "obsolete" words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader.
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
Svetlana said that I thought of myself as a robot who could act only negatively. She said I had cynical ideas about language. “You think language is an end in itself. You don’t believe it stands for anything. No, it’s not that you don’t believe—it’s that you don’t care. For you, language itself is a self-sufficient system.” “But it is a self-sufficient system.” “Do you see what you’re saying? This is how you get yourself involved with the devil incarnate. Ivan sensed this attitude in you. He’s cynical in the same way you are only more so, because of math. It’s like you said: math is a language that started out so abstract, more abstract than words, and then suddenly it turned out to be the most real, the most physical thing there was. With math they built the atomic bomb. Suddenly this abstract language is leaving third-degree burns on your skin. Now there’s this special language that can control everything, and manipulate everything, and if you’re the elite who speaks it—you can control everything. “Ivan wanted to try an experiment, a game. It would never have worked with someone different, on someone like me. But you, you’re so disconnected from truth, you were so ready to jump into a reality the two of you made up, just through language. Naturally, it made him want to see how far he could go. You went further and further—and then something went wrong. It couldn’t continue in the same way. It had to develop into something else—into sex, or something else. But for some reason, it didn’t. The experiment didn’t work. But by now you’re so, so far from all the landmarks. You’re just drifting in space.
Elif Batuman (The Idiot)
A healthy attitude to eating I am concerned about the current victimisation of food. The apparent need to divide the contents of our plates into heroes and villains. The current villains are sugar and gluten, though it used to be fat, and before that it was salt (and before that it was carbs and . . . oh, I’ve lost track). It is worth remembering that today’s devil will probably be tomorrow’s angel and vice versa. We risk having the life sucked out of our eating by allowing ourselves to be shamed over our food choices. If this escalates, historians may look back on this generation as one in which society’s decision about what to eat was driven by guilt and shame rather than by good taste or pleasure. Well, not on my watch. Yes, I eat cake, and ice cream and meat. I eat biscuits and bread and drink alcohol too. What is more, I eat it all without a shred of guilt. And yet, I like to think my eating is mindful rather than mindless. I care deeply about where my food has come from, its long-term effect on me and the planet. That said, I eat what you might call ‘just enough’ rather than too much. My rule of thumb – just don’t eat too much of any one thing.
Nigel Slater (A Year of Good Eating: The Kitchen Diaries III)
The French have coined a phrase for their slipshod indifference, their way of letting things take care of themselves. They call it “je-m’en-foutisme,” an attitude toward life that may be somewhat inadequately translated as “I-don’t-give-a-damnism.
Lion Feuchtwanger (The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940)
The word which best sums up the medieval attitude to the Devil, miracles, and everything in between is “superstition.” People do not understand the laws of physics, the nature of matter, or even how the human body functions. Hence they do not see limitations on how the world operates.
Ian Mortimer (The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century)
I spent most of my time floating on an inflatable raft in the pristine Mediterranean waters, my big belly curving toward the sun, reading (incongruously) The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It rocked me to my core. Malcolm’s story opened a window onto a reality I had ignored. But the greatest revelation the book brought me was the possibility of profound human transformation. I was spellbound by his journey from the doped-up, numbers-running, woman-beating, street-hustling, pimping Malcolm Little to a proud, clean, literate, Muslim Malcolm X who taught that all white people were the Devil incarnate—to his final, spiritual transformation in Mecca. There he met white people from all over the world who received him as a brother, and he realized that “white,” as he had been using the word, didn’t mean skin color as much as it meant attitudes and actions some whites held toward non-whites—but that not all whites were racist. At the time of his murder, he was anything but the hatemonger portrayed in the American press. Somehow, through the horrors that had been his life, he had become a spiritual leader. How had this been possible?
Jane Fonda (My Life So Far)
People have asked me why I maintain a positive mental attitude and a positive self-talk, even in the face of utter despair. It is simple. I am always certain that the devil thinks and talks ill of me all the time, and I do not intend to become a second witness by thinking and speaking ill of myself. You know: 'out of the mouths of two or three witnesses shall a matter be established.
Abiodun Fijabi
Christ’s fourth indirect claim was to judge the world. This is perhaps the most fantastic of all his statements. Several of his parables imply that he will come back at the end of the world, and that the final day of reckoning will be postponed until his return. He will himself arouse the dead, and all the nations will be gathered before him. He will sit on the throne of his glory, and the judgment will be committed to him by the Father. He will then separate men from one another as a shepherd separates his sheep from his goats. Some will be invited to come and inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Others will hear the dreadful words, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' Not only will Jesus be the judge, but the criterion of judgment will be men’s attitude to him as shown in their treatment of his 'brethren' or their response to his word. Those who have acknowledged him before men he will acknowledge before his Father: those who have denied him, he will deny. Indeed, for a man to be excluded from heaven on the last day, it will be enough for Jesus to say, "I never knew you.
John R.W. Stott (Basic Christianity (IVP Classics))
I saw that,” she teased. “What?” “That little…eyes-falling-down-my body-to inspect-the-competition-with-a-side-of-judgment look,” she said, rolling her neck with attitude. Competition? Is that what she is? I chuckle, digging in my pocket for my keys as I walk for the driver’s side door. “I wasn’t looking at you like that.” “Checking me out, then?” “Yeah.” I unlock the door and open it. “That’s it.
Penelope Douglas (Nightfall (Devil's Night, #4))
A man's features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for fulfilment and which his fears demand for their protection of prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. If he is afraid, then he must be feared; if he desires, then he must be desired. It is a screen to hide his mind's nakedness. Only a few men, painters, have been able to see the mind through the face. Other men in their judgements reach out for the evidence of word and deed that will explain the mask before their eyes. Yet, though they understand instinctively that the mask cannot be the man behind it; they are generally shocked by a demonstration of the fact. The duplicity of others must always be shocking when one is unconscious of one's own.
Eric Ambler (Mask of Dimitrios, The)
Historically, from around the sixteenth century “white and black connoted purity and filthiness, virginity and sin, virtue and baseness, beauty and ugliness, beneficence and evil, God and the devil” (p.6). Jordan has observed that from about 1680 there was a marked shift from the terms “free” and “christian”, which colonists had applied to themselves, toward the use of the new self-identifying term of “white”. Skin color was of such importance that by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had been employed as a rationale for enslavement. For instance, in 1709, a Samuel Seawall purportedly recorded in his diary that a Spaniard who had petitioned the Massachusetts Council for manumission had been opposed by a captain on the basis that any one of his dusty color was destined to be a slave. Jordan, who related the story, commented that the prevalent attitude underlined the existence of a “we” and a “they” group in slave society based on the visible characteristic of skin color, a stereotyping that was to become permanent. Yet the ideology of racism did not supplant the ideology of religion and the ideology of slavery. What happened was that each contributed tenets
Eddie Donoghue (Black Breeding Machines)
— it is necessary to educate them from an early age to cultivate a life of faith through prayer, through the Mass, and through association with the various Catholic youth clubs and other similar organizations. It is absolutely necessary to give them a sense of God and the awareness of the existence of sin and the Devil, the tempter who wishes to lead us to a separation from God and therefore to death. These young people, then, when they become older, will probably have developed the right attitudes toward these sects and satanic practices. I am aware that it involves a difficult form of education, but let us always remember that, because of the total absence of beautiful and good ideals, young people today are more exposed to these dangers. When faith disappears, one abandons himself to superstition and occultism.
Gabriele Amorth (An Exorcist Explains the Demonic: The Antics of Satan and His Army of Fallen Angels)
The curse of life The story of Man’s10 abrupt expulsion from Eden – be it fiction, metaphor or literal fact – has become etched too deeply on the collective unconscious to ignore, for it has set in stone Judaeo-Christian attitudes to men, women, original sin (and therefore children), the Creator and his opposition, Lucifer/Satan/the Devil. This all-powerful myth has imbued us all at some level of perception with a belief that life is a curse, that death is the end – a collapsing back of the body into its constituent dust, no more – that women are inherently on intimate terms with evil, that men have carte blanche to do as they please with not only all the animals in the world but also their womenfolk, and that God, above all, is to be feared. Snakes come out of it rather badly, too, as the embodiment of evil, the medium through which Satan tempts we pathetic humans. The Devil, on the other hand, is the only being in the tale to show some intelligence, perhaps even humour, in taking the form of a wriggling, presumably charming, phallic symbol through which to tempt a woman. As both Judaism and Christianity depend so intimately on the basic premises of Genesis, this lost paradise of the soul is evoked several times throughout both Old and New Testaments. The crucified Jesus promised the thief hanging on the cross next to him ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise’,11 although it is unclear how those listening may have interpreted this term. Did they see it as synonymous with ‘heaven’, a state of bliss that must remain unknowable to the living (and remain for ever unknown to the wicked)? Or did it somehow encompass the old idea of the luxuriant garden?
Lynn Picknett (The Secret History of Lucifer (New Edition))
Fruits of the Spirit GOODNESS and KINDNESS live in the hearts of those who have suffered greatly, as the wounded tend to learn compassion through their misery. GENTLENESS is born out of the adversity that has challenged a believer, but who has then released all hopes for vindication to the power of God. PEACE is a fruit that grows from seeds of trust. LOVE matures as we learn to give up pieces of ourselves for the benefit of others, knowing full well that every piece we loose is replaced by an even more wondrous portion of Christ. JOY comes from knowing God and experiencing His strength during trials. PATIENCE is learned through experiences of long-suffering and allows the saint to move forward on his earthy journey, while always longing for his real home in heaven. FAITHFULNESS means commitment. It is a sold-out attitude and stance that resonates a belief in God’s unquestionable ability to do the impossible. Finally, the believer who suffers in the name of Christ for love’s sake grows in SELF-CONTROL. With this final fruit, the temptations of the devil lesson and loose their power. We gain strength by gaining self-control.
Cheryl Zelenka
There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.
Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
There is an intellectual trick, which consists in associating the idea of the gratification so firmly with some painful thought, that after a little practice the thought of gratification is itself immediately felt as a very painful one. (For example, when the Christian accustoms himself to think of the presence and scorn of the devil in the course of sensual enjoyment, or everlasting punishment in hell for revenge by murder; or even merely of the contempt which he will meet with from those of his fellow-men whom he most respects, if he steals a sum of money, or if a man has often checked an intense desire for suicide by thinking of the grief and self-reproaches of his relations and friends, and has thus succeeded in balancing himself upon the edge of life: for, after some practice, these ideas follow one another in his mind like cause and effect.) Among instances of this kind may be mentioned the cases of Lord Byron and Napoleon, in whom the pride of man revolted and took offence at the preponderance of one particular passion over the collective attitude and order of reason. From this arises the habit and joy of tyrannising over the craving and making it, as it were, gnash its teeth. “I will not be a slave of any appetite,” wrote Byron in his diary.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality)
In these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever. Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant—as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of intellectual amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell—or into Hanwell.
G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
But whether I’m on deck or below it, I’ll never be far.” “Shall I take that as a promise? Or a threat?” She sauntered toward him, hands cocked on her hips in an attitude of provocation. His eyes swept her body, washing her with angry heat. She noted the subtle tensing of his shoulders, the frayed edge of his breath. Even exhausted and hurt, he still wanted her. For a moment, Sophia felt hope flicker to life inside her. Enough for them both. And then, with the work of an instant, he quashed it all. Gray stepped back. He gave a loose shrug and a lazy half-smile. If I don’t care about you, his look said, you can’t possibly hurt me. “Take it however you wish.” “Oh no, you don’t. Don’t you try that move with me.” With trembling fingers, she began unbuttoning her gown. “What the devil are you doing? You think you can just hike up your shift and make-“ “Don’t get excited.” She stripped the bodice down her arms, then set to work unlacing her stays. “I’m merely settling a score. I can’t stand to be in your debt a moment longer.” Soon she was down to her chemise and plucking coins from the purse tucked between her breasts. One, two, three, four, five… “There,” she said, casing the sovereigns on the table. “Six pounds, and”-she fished out a crown-“ten shillings. You owe me the two.” He held up open palms. “Well, I’m afraid I have no coin on me. You’ll have to trust me for it.” “I wouldn’t trust you for anything. Not even two shillings.” He glared at her a moment, then turned on his heel and exited the cabin, banging the door shut behind him. Sophia stared at it, wondering whether she dared stomp after him with her bodice hanging loose around her hips. Before she could act on the obvious affirmative, he stormed back in. “Here.” A pair of coins clattered to the table. “Two shillings. And”-he drew his other hand from behind his back-“your two leaves of paper. I don’t want to be in your debt, either.” The ivory sheets fluttered as he released them. One drifted to the floor. Sophia tugged a banknote from her bosom and threw it on the growing pile. To her annoyance, it made no noise and had correspondingly little dramatic value. In compensation, she raised her voice. “Buy yourself some new boots. Damn you.” “While we’re settling scores, you owe me twenty-odd nights of undisturbed sleep.” “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “We’re even on that regard.” She paused, glaring a hole in his forehead, debating just how hateful she would make this. Very. “You took my innocence,” she said coldly-and completely unfairly, because they both knew she’d given it freely enough. “Yes, and I’d like my jaded sensibilities restored, but there’s no use wishing after rainbows, now is there?” He had a point there. “I suppose we’re squared away then.” “I suppose we are.” “There’s nothing else I owe you?” His eyes were ice. “Not a thing.” But there is, she wanted to shout. I still owe you the truth, if only you’d care enough to ask for it. If only you cared enough for me, to want to know. But he didn’t. He reached for the door. “Wait,” he said. “There is one last thing.” Sophia’s heart pounded as he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a scrap of white fabric. “There,” he said, unceremoniously casting it atop the pile of coins and notes and paper. “I’m bloody tired of carrying that around.” And then he was gone, leaving Sophia to wrap her arms over her half-naked chest and stare numbly at what he’d discarded. A lace-trimmed handkerchief, embroidered with a neat S.H.
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
I still remember a small story from the Pañca Tantra which I was told as a small child. One rainy day, a monkey was sitting on a tree branch getting completely drenched. Right opposite on another branch of the same tree there was a small sparrow sitting in its hanging nest. Normally a sparrow builds its nest on the edge of a branch so it can hang down and swing around gently in the breeze. It has a nice cabin inside with an upper chamber, a reception room, a bedroom down below and even a delivery room if it is going to give birth to little ones. Oh yes, you should see and admire a sparrow’s nest sometime. It was warm and cozy inside its nest and the sparrow peeped out and, seeing the poor monkey, said, “Oh, my dear friend, I am so small; I don’t even have hands like you, only a small beak. But with only that I built a nice house, expecting this rainy day. Even if the rain continues for days, I will be warm inside. I heard Darwin saying that you are the forefather of human beings, so why don’t you use your brain? Build a nice, small hut somewhere to protect yourself during the rain.” You should have seen the face of that monkey. It was terrible! “Oh, you little devil! How dare you try to advise me? Because you are warm and cozy in your nest you are teasing me. Wait, you will see where you are!” The monkey proceeded to tear the nest to pieces, and the poor bird had to fly out and get drenched like the monkey. This is a story I was told when I was quite young and I still remember it. Sometimes we come across such monkeys, and if you advise them they take it as an insult. They think you are proud of your position. If you sense even a little of that tendency in somebody, stay away. He or she will have to learn by experience. By giving advice to such people, you will only lose your peace of mind. Is there any other category you can think of? Patañjali groups all individuals in these four ways: the happy, the unhappy, the virtuous and the wicked. So have these four attitudes: friendliness, compassion, gladness and indifference. These four keys should always be with you in your pocket. If you use the right key with the right person you will retain your peace. Nothing in the world can upset you then. Remember, our goal is to keep a serene mind. From the very beginning of Patañjali’s Sūtras we are reminded of that. And this sūtra will help us a lot.
Satchidananda (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: Commentary on the Raja Yoga Sutras by Sri Swami Satchidananda)
Here’s a sentence in a book I’m reading: ‘We belong, of course, to a generation that’s seen through things, seen how futile everything is, and had the courage to accept futility, and say to ourselves: There’s nothing for it but to enjoy ourselves as best we can.’ Well, I suppose that’s my generation, the one that’s seen the war and its aftermath; and, of course, it is the attitude of quite a crowd; but when you come to think of it, it might have been said by any rather unthinking person in any generation; certainly might have been said by the last generation after religion had got the knock that Darwin gave it. For what does it come to? Suppose you admit having seen through religion and marriage and treaties, and commercial honesty and freedom and ideals of every kind, seen that there’s nothing absolute about them, that they lead of themselves to no definite reward, either in this world or a next which doesn’t exist perhaps, and that the only thing absolute is pleasure and that you mean to have it — are you any farther towards getting pleasure? No! you’re a long way farther off. If everybody’s creed is consciously and crudely ‘grab a good time at all costs,’ everybody is going to grab it at the expense of everybody else, and the devil will take the hindmost, and that’ll be nearly everybody, especially the sort of slackers who naturally hold that creed, so that they, most certainly, aren’t going to get a good time. All those things they’ve so cleverly seen through are only rules of the road devised by men throughout the ages to keep people within bounds, so that we may all have a reasonable chance of getting a good time, instead of the good time going only to the violent, callous, dangerous and able few. All our institutions, religion, marriage, treaties, the law, and the rest, are simply forms of consideration for others necessary to secure consideration for self. Without them we should be a society of feeble motor-bandits and streetwalkers in slavery to a few super-crooks. You can’t, therefore, disbelieve in consideration for others without making an idiot of yourself and spoiling your own chances of a good time. The funny thing is that no matter how we all talk, we recognise that perfectly. People who prate like the fellow in that book don’t act up to their creed when it comes to the point. Even a motor-bandit doesn’t turn King’s evidence. In fact, this new philosophy of ‘having the courage to accept futility and grab a good time’ is simply a shallow bit of thinking; all the same, it seemed quite plausible when I read it.
John Galsworthy (Maid In Waiting (The Forsyte Chronicles, #7))
In order to refashion the world, it is necessary for people themselves to adopt a different mental attitude. Until man becomes brother unto man, there shall be no brotherhood of men. No kind of science or material advantage will ever induce people to share their property or their rights equitably. No one will ever have enough, people will always grumble, they will always envy and destroy one another. You ask when will all this come about. It will come about, but first there must be an end to the habit of self-imposed isolation of man.’ ‘What isolation?’ I asked him. ‘The kind that is prevalent everywhere now, especially in our age, and which has not yet come to an end, has not yet run its course. For everyone nowadays strives to dissociate himself as much as possible from others, everyone wants to savour the fullness of life for himself, but all his best efforts lead not to fullness of life but to total self-destruction, and instead of ending with a comprehensive evaluation of his being, he rushes headlong into complete isolation. For everyone has dissociated himself from everyone else in our age, everyone has disappeared into his own burrow, distanced himself from the next man, hidden himself and his possessions, the result being that he has abandoned people and has, in his turn, been abandoned. He piles up riches in solitude and thinks: ‘How powerful I am now, and how secure,’ and it never occurs to the poor devil that the more he accumulates, the further he sinks into suicidal impotence. For man has become used to relying on himself alone, and has dissociated himself from the whole; he has accustomed his soul to believe neither in human aid, nor in people, nor in humanity; he trembles only at the thought of losing his money* and the privileges he has acquired. Everywhere the human mind is beginning arrogantly to ignore the fact that man’s true security is to be attained not through the isolated efforts of the individual, but in a corporate human identity. But it is certain that this terrible isolation will come to an end, and everyone will realize at a stroke how unnatural it is for one man to cut himself off from another. This will indeed be the spirit of the times, and people will be surprised how long they have remained in darkness and not seen the light. It is then that the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven…* But, nevertheless, until then man should hold the banner aloft and should from time to time, quite alone if necessary, set an example and rescue his soul from isolation in order to champion the bond of fraternal love, though he be taken for a holy fool. And he should do this in order that the great Idea should not die…
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Karamazov Brothers)
The devil will use fear, pride,jealousy, time wasters, hurt, thoughts, disappointments to get us to turn our eyes away from Jesus. Don't give him a moment in your life.
Amanda Penland
What did you wish for, Grimm?" Hawk ignored the warning with the devil-may-care attitude that was his wont where the lasses were concerned. A slow smile slid over Grimm's face. "A lass who doesn't want you. A lovely, nay, an earth-shatteringly beautiful one, with wit and wisdom to boot. One with a perfect face and a perfect body and a perfect 'no' on her perfect lips for you, my oh-so perfect friend. And I also wished to be allowed to watch the battle.
Karen Marie Moning
Kind and lovely thought originate from God while evil and revengeful thoughts are initiated by the devil.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
Doubt births negative confessions; it hinders God’s promises and it spurs the devil into action! Don’t give the devil any propelling force against your life! God is able in all situations; only when you believe!
Ayobola Olusegun-Emmanuel
APRIL 29 I WILL NOT PERMIT THE PROUD TO OPPRESS YOU I WILL NOT leave you to your oppressors, and I will not let the proud oppress you. I will bless you because you put your trust in Me and do not respect the proud, nor those who turn aside to lies. Meditate on My precepts. Do not fear the oppressors, for I will put them to shame and revive you according to My loving-kindness. I will destroy the house of the proud, but I hear every prayer of the righteous. I will resist the proud, but I will give My grace to you if you remain humble. Behold, I have released you from the oppression of the wicked. I will multiply your life, and you will not be diminished. I will glorify you with My righteousness, and your children will be established. But I will punish all who seek to oppress you. PSALMS 119:122; 40:4; 119:88; 1 PETER 5:5; JEREMIAH 30:19–20 Prayer Declaration Because I have placed my trust in You, O Lord, and have humbled myself and resisted the wicked intentions of the proud, You have blessed my life and set me free from the bondage of oppression. Because of Your loving-kindness to me, I will seek to bring Your consolation and encouragement to others by becoming a servant to them and developing the same attitude as that of Your Son, Christ Jesus.
John Eckhardt (Daily Declarations for Spiritual Warfare: Biblical Principles to Defeat the Devil)
No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Alone With God (MacArthur Study Series))
April 26 The Supreme Climb Take now thy son, . . . and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. Genesis 22:2 Character determines how a man interprets God’s will (cf. Psalm 18:25–26). Abraham interpreted God’s command to mean that he had to kill his son, and he could only leave this tradition behind by the pain of a tremendous ordeal. God could purify his faith in no other way. If we obey what God says according to our sincere belief, God will break us from those traditions that misrepresent Him. There are many such beliefs to be got rid of, e.g., that God removes a child because the mother loves him too much—a devil’s lie! and a travesty of the true nature of God. If the devil can hinder us from taking the supreme climb and getting rid of wrong traditions about God, he will do so; but if we keep true to God, God will take us through an ordeal which will bring us out into a better knowledge of Himself. The great point of Abraham’s faith in God was that he was prepared to do anything for God. He was there to obey God, no matter to what belief he went contrary. Abraham was not a devotee of his convictions, or he would have slain Isaac and said that the voice of the angel was the voice of the devil. That is the attitude of a fanatic. If you will remain true to God, God will lead you straight through every barrier into the inner chamber of the knowledge of Himself; but there is always this point of giving up convictions and traditional beliefs. Don’t ask God to test you. Never declare as Peter did—I will do anything, I will go to death with Thee. Abraham did not make any such declaration, he remained true to God, and God purified his faith.
Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration. It invests puny man with a sort of omnipotence.2
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer)
It is important for you to understand that people will criticize you even if you don’t give them anything to criticize. Some people will find fault about what you are wearing. They will judge your actions without knowing what kind of directions your supervisor gave you to carry out a particular assignment. Some people will judge your attitude and your living environment. They will criticize the way you talk, walk, and eat. They will criticize the way you pray, dress, preach, teach, sing, and even cook. Some people will always find fault about anything and everything. It seems as if it is sometimes easier for people to focus on another person’s faults, problems, or issues so that they don’t have to cope with their own personal issues, shortcomings, and insecurities. My former pastor, who is now deceased, used to say, “I have six months to mind my own business and another six months to leave everybody else’s alone.” If we live with this kind of attitude, we will not have time to exercise a judgmental spirit or a spirit of criticism or faultfinding. We need to realize that when we criticize other people, we are not giving God glory. Instead, we are giving our opinion, which oftentimes leads to judging others and glorifying the works of the Devil and not God.
Thelma Gilbert (Healed from a Bent Condition)
My dear friend, a good attitude will determine your altitude. When you look at your life, career, job or family life, what do you say? Do you praise God? Do you blame the devil? A good attitude towards God makes Him move on your behalf. Just sit down and say, Today God, it is well with my soul, I am thankful I had a peaceful sleep, I am thankful I am alive with possibilities, I am thankful I have a roof over me, I am thankful I have a job, I am thankful that I have Family and Friends. Above all, I am thankful that I have the Lord Jesus Christ on my side. Be blessed and don't be envious or shocked when others are prospering because you don't know what they have been through to get there (test, trials and tribulation) so thank God for what you have. "Little is much when God is in it. It Is Well With My Soul! Touch someone’s life with this message. If God be for us,who can be against us?
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
Through the years, I've encountered about every attitude and response known to the human emotional spectrum. Some people thought me a courageous pioneer, others regarded me as disgusting and immoral; some of the clergy considered that I had committed an ungodly act. Why these reactions to me should be so explosively pro and con, only God or the Devil knows, and I suspect they are both puzzled.
Christine Jorgensen (Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography)
It's no use being a devil if you want to beam light into the world. Radiate good energy and good energy will find its way back to you.
Torron-Lee Dewar
When Christian leaders dare to invade with authority the devil’s domain with kingdom attitude, people listen
Sunday Adelaja
Comparing the sun with the moon is similar to those who try to compare God with the devil.
Mwanandeke Kindembo
Let's no' make this langsome, MacTaggart. Lady Merritt is weary, and as you know, I'm no' one to stand on ceremony." "'Tis a haisty affair, aye?" the sheriff observed, some of his good cheer fading as he looked around the room. "No flowers? No candles?" "No, and also no ring," Keir informed him. "Let us say our pledge, give us the certificate, and we'll have done with it in time for supper." MacTaggart clearly didn't appreciate the younger man's cavalier attitude. "You'll be having no signed paper until I make certain 'tis done legal," he said, squaring his shoulders. "First... do ye ken there's a fine if you've no' posted banns?" "'Tis no' a church wedding," Keir said. "The law says without the banns, 'tis a fine of fifty pounds." As Keir gave him an outraged glance, the sheriff added firmly, "No exceptions." "What if I give you a bottle of whisky?" Keir asked. "Fine is waived," MacTaggart said promptly. "Now, then... do the rest of you agree to stand as witnesses?" Ethan and the Slorachs all nodded. "I'll start, then," Keir said briskly, and took Merritt's hand. "I, Keir MacRae, do swear that I--" "No' yet," the sheriff interrupted, now scowling. "'Tis my obligation to ask a few questions first." "MacTaggart, so help me---" Keir began in annoyance, but Merritt squeezed his hand gently. He heaved a sigh and clamped his mouth shut. The sheriff resumed with great dignity. "Are the both of you agreeable to be wed?" "Aye," Keir said acidly. "Yes," Merritt replied.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Disguise (The Ravenels, #7))
The leaders of the hunt can be viewed as fertility spirits, representations of unrestrained sexuality. In earlier times, the Wild Hunt was associated with fertility cults, but in Christian times it became a symbol of the devil at work, which perhaps highlights the differing sexual attitudes of pagans and Christians. To the former, the sexual urge is wild, chaotic, and celebrated, while to the Christians it is fearsome, demonic, and strange.
Adams Media (The Book of Celtic Myths: From the Mystic Might of the Celtic Warriors to the Magic of the Fey Folk, the Storied History and Folklore of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, and Wales)
It is very easy to prove to anyone that religious people have no morals, that their public image is a facade, and that they hide the most dangerous perversions. Because you see, they don’t consider you, the outsider, worthy of sympathy or honesty. And so, they consider as legitimate to lie and abuse, and disrespect, even attack violently, slander and manipulate any outsider. The most vicious insults I ever heard came from the mouths of people who consider themselves above moral judgement. They do this in the premise that their group secures their moral status. And as a matter of fact, it does. Nobody will ever act against a member of his own religious group, no matter how wrong he is. And in doing so, anyone sells his soul for cheap. The thing is, by doing that, they are also justifying a very demonic attitude towards people, because we are talking about people here, and not just “outsiders”. It is just that they don’t consider outsiders to their group real human beings, like they are, you see. And so, by being part of a religion, christians, muslims, jews, rosicrucians, hindus, buddhists, freemasons and scientologists, end up justifying being the cruelest of all people on earth. Hell must be having a laugh on this for many thousands of years. Because, you see, all the demons are there, in those groups. That’s not hard to imagine, since the most racist and xenophobic nations also claim to be the most religious orientated, and when you give too much emphasis to a religion, you will invariably expose yourself to this cheap trick played by the devil, of making you sell your soul for cheap. And unless you are truly a God chosen soul, you will fall for this trick, because you won't have the courage to be separated from what you considered previously as being a divine path. Few souls dare to admit that it is impossible for a true moral person to be part of any religion, simply because they’re all perverted. You need a very high ethical level to be able to see that, and those people, in these groups, don't have it. They speak the most vividly about morals, and yet, are the ones nobody should listen, because listening to them is like listening to demons describing paradise. They are not there, in their own words, they don't even see what they are talking about, they don't apply it. They are a scam. Their existence is a scam. And if you confront them with their own scam, their mask will fall off, and you will see their true demonic face. Because that's who they truly are. When you sell your soul for cheap to hell, you become a part of it. And that's who you are. That's why when the mask falls, they show you horrible, disgusting and very ugly appearances. And I have never met one single group in the entire planet where this does not happen. As a matter of fact, the more a group talks about evil, the more certainly it is that they represent that very same evil.
Dan Desmarques
Ignorance and Arrogance Thud Manifesting a Labyrinth from a Flood They are brothers, share the same Blood It is from them that Apathy can Bud Devil’s advocate rests in the Mud Showing its assets like a Stud Projection of right and wrong without Consent These brothers never say a word they Meant
Aida Mandic (A Candid Aim)
Kate had always been a planner. It had come from her childhood spent alone with her policeman father, one in which she ran the house and their lives because his job gave him little time to handle housework or cooking, and what time they had he wanted to spend with his daughter. As an adult, she’d still write out shopping lists on a magnetic pad affixed to the fridge, adding to the list daily to ensure nothing would be forgotten. Before the advent of GPS, she would plan a journey or trip in a notebook with military precision, working out arrival times or stops along the way, and when it came to work, no one was more methodical than Kate Young. Chris was the yin to her yang, with a devil-may-care attitude and a zest for spontaneity. They balanced each other: he lifting her from too solemn an outlook on life, and she grounding him whenever he had a wild whim to do something so utterly crazy it bordered on foolhardy. Her world was full of order. Some found her too serious-minded and were irritated by her attitude. Others, like William Chase, praised her for it. It got results.
Carol Wyer (An Eye for an Eye (Detective Kate Young, #1))
God sometimes allows the enemy of our souls to bring temptation to us. We are the circled about, hedged-in people of God. No one and nothing gets to us unless God allows it. Big Mama died. God allowed it. Job lost. God allowed it. The nuclear reactor incident in Japan. God allowed it. The trouble in the Middle East. God allowed it. Gas prices. God allowed it. We are not like everyone else in the world. We are under the sovereign control of the Sovereign God. Our attitudes should be reflective of the fact that we understand this. So then, even in the middle of temptation and trial, we do not sorrow as those who are hopeless.
James Ford Jr. (What to Do When The Devil Talks to You: How Christians Learn to Be Victorious over Temptation)
• About the time I transitioned from being an emotionally disturbed teenager to a hardcore outlaw, I began to view the material world as a temporary illusion crippled by human boundaries. • Torn between the freewheeling lifestyle of a smuggler and being an austere spiritual seeker, there was a lot to sort out. • Being legal or illegal often depended upon what side of a border I was standing on. • A quiet disposition, warmth and imagination are prerequisites that moderate the chaos in a smuggler’s life, so I reciprocated with a beatific smile of my own. • As I became Americanized, the gap between my parents and me, even at such a tender age, had already grown to unmanageable proportions. • Kneeling at my side to check my attitude, he brushed the snow from my face. • God was some vague, powerful character that grown-ups harped on with varying degrees of reverent conviction. • He thought the man should have a cyclopean eye or some other distinguishing characteristic that would make the situation more discernible. • Mario made me feel like I belonged and I willfully flicked on the felonious switch. • It made perfect sense to view everyone as a cop so I wouldn’t end up in Bangkok’s Klong Prem Central prison on Ngamwongwan Road. • The pilot taxied us to the edge of the jungle where an old, dilapidated military jeep waited to take us to a place I was no longer sure I wanted to go. • Ancient and deadly, Asia would grow on me like the jungle that swallows everything in it. • He knew that I wasn’t being nurtured like other children, so he made it his personal mission to give me an edge. • I had only wanted to escape the sour halitosis of middle-class decay and the dead-end ramblings of my philosophy professors at the University of Wisconsin. • All the cells in my being were trying to shut their tiny little doors to keep out the sudden infestation of the dragon and his hordes of relentless devils. • Philip was like a shooting star whose spectacular tail burned across the financial sky for decades.
Marjan. (600 Devils: From refugee to redemption, a life impacted by smuggling, cannabis, psychedelics, conmen, cops and assorted holy men.)
You have read New England history, dear, but you’ve let the ugly parts slip into the back of your mind. Your forefathers hanged helpless old women as witches.” “Yes, Lanny, but they believed the devil was in them.” “The Communists believe the devil is in the capitalists, the great landlords and others who monopolize the means of life and use them to exploit the laboring masses. It is a different set of ideas, but the fundamental attitude, the type of mind, is the same. Your forefathers put men in stocks, they ducked women in ducking stools, they drove Roger Williams, a gentle mystic, out into the wilderness.” “Surely they never murdered people wholesale as the Communists have done!” “Are you sure? Just go to your public library and get a history of Ireland, and see what Oliver Cromwell did to the Irish people, the names he called them, and the wholesale ferocious slaughter. Ireland is a smaller country than Russia, but proportionately I doubt if the Communists have killed as many people in Russia as the Roundheads killed in the Emerald Isle. You and I are used to seeing social progress made by means of the ballot, but we have to bear in mind that some peoples haven’t reached that stage of development and cannot get any sort of change without violence, and a lot of it.
Upton Sinclair (O Shepherd, Speak! (The Lanny Budd Novels #10))
I answered without thinking. For me, a conversation’s just a series of reactions, reflex responses. I’ve got a habit of saying whatever the other person wants to hear. I’m a real people-pleaser. I know it’s probably not a good thing, but I accept myself – devil-may-care attitude and all.
Izumi Suzuki (Terminal Boredom: Stories)
The rumors that he did business with the Giacanos were I’m sure true. To what degree was up for debate. In the state of Louisiana, systemic venality is a given. The state’s culture, mind-set, religious attitudes, and economics are no different from those of a Caribbean nation. The person who believes he can rise to a position of wealth and power in the state of Louisiana and not do business with the devil probably knows nothing about the devil and even less about Louisiana.
James Lee Burke (Crusader's Cross (Dave Robicheaux, #14))
Were those gold flecks in his warm brown eyes or was it just the glitter of ill intent? Was that a smile or a smirk on his handsome face? Was the devil-may-care attitude masking something more sinister? And were those jeans molded to his narrow hips for ease of running away? Or to entice a sex-starved candy store employee who couldn't remember the last time she'd had a hookup?
Sara Desai (To Have and to Heist)
Because of his literal understanding of the Christian myth, Western man has an attitude to death which other cultures find puzzling. The Christian way of thought has made so deep an impression upon our culture that this attitude prevails even when the intellectual assent to Christian dogma exists no more. For it is no easy matter to cast off the influence of our history, to be rid of habit of thought and emotion which has prevailed for close to two thousand years. Western man has learned a peculiarly exaggerated dread of death, because he has seen it as the event which will precipitate him for ever into either unspeakable joy or unimaginable misery. Few have dared to be quite certain as to the outcome, for though one might hope for the mercy of God, it was a very serious sin to presume upon it. The sense of uncertainty was, furthermore, part and parcel of Christian feeling for the insidious subtlety of evil, so that the more one approached sanctity, the more one was aware of diabolical motivations, and of the near impossibility of a pure intent. Many sold their souls to the Devil just because this very uncertainty seemed more insupportable than damnation itself
Alan W. Watts (Myth and Ritual In Christianity)
I am someone who has stepped through the door, someone who has accepted the possibility of a life beyond routine and self-misery. I have accepted the challenge of life and I now see it as something that must be overcome. I challenge you, young man, to see the weight and measure of life, to look for the places in between here and there, and to try and battle against that devil that screams in your head, that devil that wants to make you take the easy path, that makes you want to hate yourself and the world, that wants to make you think that somehow you are special in your struggles and in your fate. Wake up boy, or the only thing that you will ever find at the end of all your routine and self-misery, is your death
John Kreiter (The Art of Transmutation)
If you want to experience torpor you have to be willing to do one of two things: you either have to be fine with everything going to hell, or you have to have a devil-may-care attitude and be bold enough to act completely irresponsibly. You’ll never be able to achieve torpor worrying about every little thing that comes your way.
Kim Un-Su (The Cabinet)
Change is a funny thing. Although most people say they want to change—so they can have a better life, with more love, more dreams, and more fun—the fact is that many of us are afraid of change. Faced with the real prospect of it, we look at our lives and decide that being where we are right now isn’t so bad, after all. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, we tell ourselves. Tony Robbins, the great motivational speaker and coach, calls this attitude a kind of “no man’s land” of the soul. It’s a place where your life isn’t really that great, but it really isn’t that bad, either. It’s just so-so.
David Bach (Smart Couples Finish Rich: 9 Steps to Creating a Rich Future for You and Your Partner)
The Bukharin pamphlet was published in the United States in 1920 by the Contemporary Publishing Association, one of the early underground publishing organizations of the Communist Party. It stated: All these considerations explain the program of the Communists with regard to their attitude to religion and to the church. Religion must be fought, if not by violence, at all events, by argument. The church must be separated from the state.… There is a poison called opium. When it is smoked sweet visions appear. You feel as if you were in paradise, but its action tells on the health of the smoker. His health is gradually ruined, and little by little he becomes a meek idiot. The same applies to religion. There are people who wish to smoke opium, but it would be absurd if the state maintained at its expense—that is to say, at the expense of the people—opium dens and special men to serve them. For this reason the church must be—and already is—treated in the same way. Priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, abbots and the rest of the lot must be refused state maintenance. Let the believers, if they wish it, feed the holy fathers at their own expense on the fat of the land, a thing which they, the priests, greatly appreciate. To say this was a hard, distasteful, cynical view of religion would be an obvious understatement. Nonetheless, it was fully consistent with the long-accepted communist view of religion: Religion was a seductive drug, a poison, an opiate that when smoked produces sweet visions, hallucinations, turning the junkie into a “meek idiot.” The priests were like the dealers; they peddle the junk to hook the addicts who sit stupidly in the pews.
Paul Kengor (The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration)
Proud - Another thing that our generation is filled with is pride. I penned an entire chapter about the “pride” of the LGBT community in my previous book. Their pride is no different than that of Lucifer. Pride is rebellion against the LORD and His Will. To be proud is to be self-centered, and to take great pleasure in a certain aspect of your life - whether looks, accomplishments, or lifestyle. Your way is the right way, and you could care less what others have to say or for what God thinks. The LGBTQ movement is a perfect example of the pride of the devil, because in their proud attitude they actually celebrate their sin. They are more than happy to rebel against Almighty God, because they feel that they’re right and He’s wrong. A lot of them are well aware that His Word says the way they are living is morally wrong, but they just don’t care. As long as it makes them feel good, the opinion of their Creator takes a back seat. It’s about them, and only them. They remind me of Lucifer with his five “I”s. We read in Isaiah 14:12-14, he said, “I will... I will... I will... I will... I will...” He was so puffed up in pride that he even said he would “be like” God. The LORD rebuked him, and said, no... “you will be brought down to Hell.” We all know how things turned
Michael Sawdy (Even More Signs of Our Times: MORE Biblical Reasons Why This Could Be the Generation of the Rapture)
Society's attitude toward crime and criminals is reflected by the laws on its statue books. As long as it views these problems through the prisons and fixed sentences that permit little if any discretion in the releasing or discharging delinquents and prisoners, there will be no permanent solution. Time was when a person with smallpox was lashed through the public streets as "possessed" of evil; when the disordered mind was tortured to free it from the devil. We have passed also through the periods of theoretical, hereditary crime; of criminality due to physical deformities, of limitation of will, of freedom of will, of glandular defects, and the many other pet notions of theorists and investigators.
Lewis E. Lawes (Twenty Thousand Years In Sing Sing)
Since all the calamities, fears, and sufferings in the world have arisen from self-clinging, what have I to do with that great demon? (BCA 8.134) This means that in this world, we harm each other and experience both physical and mental suffering, especially fear of the many terrifying things inside and outside ourselves. Every aspect of misery and suffering in this world actually arises from the view of a real personal identity, or the egotistic view. It is the devil in the depths of our mind that thinks: “I alone am the best. I alone am to be cherished, respected, and honored. I must be in control. Those who do not agree with me are evil; maybe they should be destroyed. How nice it would be if they did not exist.” Do you have this type of attitude or not? According to ⁄›ntideva, most people in the world do.
Lhundub Sopa (Peacock in the Poison Grove: Two Buddhist Texts on Training the Mind)
●Practice like a devil and play like an angel. ●If you cant fly then run if you cant run then walk if you cant walk then crawl but whatever you do just keep moving forward. ●Dont wait for the perfect moment, take the moment and make it perfect. ●Perfection is a work in progress. ●The ones who say "You cant" and "You wont" r probably the ones scared that "You will". ●Hard work beats talent when talent doesnt work hard. �������Own Quotes������� ●The key to be the great-be good at first then bring perfection in your goodness. You will be great for sure. ●Either only English or only Bengali will make attitude but the mixture of these wont make an attitude, its just an excuse. ●The intention of following famous wont make you famous, the intention of overpassing famousity will make you that. ●Only you are worthy of the best position if you have experienced the worst position. Worst to best is the road to be better than best.
Syed Siddique Mridul
St. John would say that the natural working of the faculties is not adequate to attain to union with God, and the beginner is drawn to spiritual exercises as much by the satisfaction as by any purely spiritual motives. For the psychologist, even while he is refraining from making any judgment about the religious object, is often painfully aware that if interior experiences are viewed as if they had nothing to do with the overall dynamics of the psyche, then their recipient runs the risk of damaging his psychic balance. If temptations must be seen only as the direct working of the devil and inspirations and revelations the direct working of the Holy Spirit, then the totality of the psyche and the flow of its energy will be misunderstood. The biggest danger to the beginner experiencing sensible fervor, or any other tangible phenomenon, is that they will equate their experience purely and simply with union with God. The very combination of genuine spiritual gifts and how these graces work through the psyche creates a sense of conviction that this, indeed, is the work of God, but this conviction is often extended to deny the human dimension as if any participation by the psyche is a denial of divine origin. The beginner, then, can become impervious to psychological and spiritual advice. The sense of consolation, the feeling of completion, the visions seen, or the voices heard, the tongue spoken, or the healings witnessed, are all identified with the exclusive direct action of God as if there were no psyche that received and conditioned these inspirations. This same attitude is then carried over into daily life and how God's action is viewed in this world. If God is so immediately present, miracles must be taking place daily. God must be intervening day-by-day, even in the minor mundane affairs of the recipients of His Spirit. This does not mean that genuine miracles do not take place, nor that genuine inspirations do not play a role in daily life, but rather, if we believe that they are conceptually distinguishable from the ordinary working of consciousness, we run the risk of identifying God's action with our own perceptions, feelings and emotions. The initial conversion state, precisely because of the degree of emotional energy it is charged with, is often clung to as if the intensity of this energy is a guarantee of its spiritual character. As beginners under the vital force of these tangible experiences we take up an attitude of inner expectancy. We look to a realm beyond the arena of the ego and assume that what transpires there is supernatural. We reach and grasp for interior messages. Thus arises a real danger of misinterpreting what we perceive. What Jung says about the inability to discern between God and the unconscious at the level of empirical experience is verified here. We run the risk of confusing the spiritual with the psychic, our own perceptions with God Himself. An even greater danger is that we will erect this kind of knowledge into a whole theology of the spiritual life, and thus judge our progress by the presence of these phenomena. “The same problem can arise in a completely different context, which could be called a pseudo-Jungian Christianity. In it the realities of the psyche which Jung described are identified with the Christian faith. Thus, at one stroke a vivid sense of experience, even mysticism, if you will, arises. The numinous experience of the unconscious becomes equivalent to the workings of the Holy Spirit. Dreams and the psychological events that take place during the process of individuation are taken for the stages of the life of prayer and the ascent of the soul to God by faith. But this mysticism is no more to be identified with St. John's than the previous one of visions and revelations.
James Arraj (St. John of the Cross and Dr. C.G. Jung: Christian Mysticism in the Light of Jungian Psychology)
If you are GOD, I am your dog; If you are DEVIL, I am your evil
'LORD VISHNU' P.S.JAGADEESH KUMAR
Perfection The human race is defined by the pursuit of perfection. There are two types of perfection humans contemplate: individual and collective. Left wingers support collective perfection, i.e. the perfection of everyone. What is the best possible world? – it is the one where everyone has been optimized and is contributing maximally. No world could be more glorious than that. It is functioning at its maximum capacity. Right wingers support individual perfection. For them, the best possible world is the one where they are perfect (optimal) and everyone else is maximally sub-optimal. They can do whatever they like to them. This is exactly the attitude that Satan has towards humanity. All right wingers are Devil worshippers. The right wing “God” of the Bible is all about his individual perfection, and the imperfection of everyone else. The far right Confederacy was one of the first outright Satanic political and economic systems, based on the enslavement of the many to enrich the few. All right wingers dream of the Confederacy.
Thomas Stark (The Book of Mind: Seeking Gnosis (The Truth Series 5))