β
I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.
β
β
Marilyn Monroe
β
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
β
β
William Shakespeare (The Tempest)
β
I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Blue-Eyed Devil (Travises, #2))
β
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.
It did not end well.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
β
β
Oscar Wilde
β
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
β
β
C.S. Lewis
β
And to the devil with it if she is!" said the Consul. "One girl, who is not Nephilim, is not, cannot, be our priority."
"She is my priority!" Will shouted.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
β
When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
β
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
β
The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone.
H e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e
I kiss my way across the words.
Kissing away the devils.
Kissing away the pain.
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
β
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
β
I don't suffer from my insanity -- I enjoy every minute of it.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.
β
β
Holly Black (White Cat (Curse Workers, #1))
β
It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathingβthey are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.
β
β
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
β
La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."
("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")
β
β
Charles Baudelaire (Paris Spleen)
β
Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist.
And a devil knelt over him and smiled.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β
Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision.
β
β
Norman Mailer
β
To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists)
β
I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
β
β
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
β
When reason fails, the devil helps!
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
β
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: Iβm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I donβt accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic β on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg β or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β
Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
β
There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk.
β
β
Tom Waits
β
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
β
β
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
β
I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.
β
β
Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca)
β
Overcome the devils with a thing called love.
β
β
Bob Marley
β
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
β
β
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
β
Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.
β
β
Arthur Miller (The Crucible)
β
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil held a wishbone between them.
And its snap split the world in two.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2))
β
I want you any way I can get you. Not because youβre beautiful or clever or kind or adorable, although devil knows youβre all those things. I want you because thereβs no one else like you, and I donβt ever want to start a day without seeing you.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Tempt Me at Twilight (The Hathaways, #3))
β
I hope something happens. I'm restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)
β
The devil is not as black as he is painted.
β
β
Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso)
β
When you love someone, truly love them, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt-you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, itβs crippling-like having your heart carved out.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon
β
Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss
β
β
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
β
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
β
β
William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)
β
Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.
β
β
Henry Miller
β
Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.
β
β
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1))
β
Eve: She told me last!
Shane: Boyfriend!
Michael: Landlord!
Eve: Crap. Right. Next time you sell your soul to the devil, I get first contact!
β
β
Rachel Caine (Midnight Alley (The Morganville Vampires, #3))
β
Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
β
The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
β
β
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β
Everything had come into sharp focus: his smooth words, his black, glinting eyes, his broad experience with lies, seduction, women. I'd fallen in love with the devil.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2))
β
Come on, say it again. I'm a perfect devil. Tell me how bad I am. It makes me feel so good!
β
β
Anne Rice (The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3))
β
So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!
β
β
Martin Luther
β
I have the feeling we just made a deal with the devil, and he's going to come back and want our first-born child or something."
Daemon waggled his brows. "You want kids? Because you know, practice makes--"
"Shut up." I shook my head and started walking.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opal (Lux, #3))
β
People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil... Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.
β
β
Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1))
β
Because you believed I was capable of behaving decently, I did.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
β
The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without: to follow one's own path, not that of the crowd.
β
β
Nicholas Tharcher (Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt)
β
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...
β
β
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
β
The Devil got landed with a shitty job, he has to deal with assholes everyday, he's probably bored as hell.
β
β
Gerard Way
β
This life is for loving, sharing, learning, smiling, caring, forgiving, laughing, hugging, helping, dancing, wondering, healing, and even more loving. I choose to live life this way. I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, 'aw shit, he's up!
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
If I were to kiss you then go to hell, I would. So then I can brag with the devils I saw heaven without ever entering it.
β
β
William Shakespeare
β
Kat laughed. 'Who wants to live forever?'
Kish put his hand up. 'For the record, I do.'
Sin scowled at him. 'Then why do you irritate me so often?'
Suicidal tendencies are inherent in my species?
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
β
Once upon a time,an angel and a devil pressed their hands to their hearts
and started the apocalypse.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #3))
β
If it was a sin for you to choose me . . . then I would go to the Devil himself and bless him for tempting ye to it.
β
β
Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2))
β
One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her~is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?
β
β
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
β
She didn't understand that. "How can anyone be afraid of love?"
"How can they not?" His face was completely aghast. "When you love someone... truly love them, friend or lover, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurtβyou literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it's cripplingβlike having your heart carved out. It leaves you naked and exposed, wondering what you did to make them want to hurt you so badly when all you did was love them. What is so wrong with you that no one can keep faith with you? That no one can love you? To have it happen once is bad enough... but to have it repeated? Who in their right mind would not be terrified of that?
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
β
Any game plan? Xypher asked Sin.
Don't die.
I like it. Simple, bold. Impossible. Works for me.
Kat scoffed at his sarcasm. What are you bitching about, Xypher? You're already dead.
He laughed. You know, for once, it's good to be me.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
β
It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless.
β
β
Donald Miller
β
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Richard III)
β
Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.
β
β
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
β
But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
β
You know the incredible thing about hearts is their unbelievable capacity for forgiveness. Youβd be amazed what people will overlook when they love someone. (Acheron)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
β
When you want to make an impression and you think youβve gone far enough, go a little further. Always leave them wondering if youβre just a little bit crazy, and people will never fuck with you again.
β
β
Penelope Douglas (Corrupt (Devil's Night, #1))
β
I wasn't born, I was unleashed.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
Studies show:
Intelligent girls are more depressed
Because they know
What the world is really like
Don't think for a beat it makes it better
When you sit her down and tell her
Everything gonna be all right
She knows in society she either is
A devil or an angel with no in between
She speaks in the third person
So she can forget that she's me
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
War is like a monster," he says, almost to himself. "War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows." He's looking at me now. "And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1))
β
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth Iβd been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
β
β
James Baldwin (Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays)
β
But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
β
β
Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front)
β
My New Yearβs Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle β may they never give me peace.
β
β
Patricia Highsmith
β
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
β
β
William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Nightβs Dream)
β
I'm the top of the food chain and well...you're the food.
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of livingβone without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothersβ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying.
Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moonβs secret temple and dreamed of a world that was a like a jewel-box without a jewelβa paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness.
This was not that world.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2))
β
A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
β
People want to change everything and, at the same time, want it all to remain the same.
β
β
Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
β
I am stronger than your god and older than your devil. I am the darkness between stars, and the roots beneath the earth. I am promise, and potential, and when it comes to playing games, i divine the rules, I set the pieces, and I choose when to play.
β
β
Victoria E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
β
Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
β
β
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
β
She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil's lair. She wasn't innocent now, but she didn't know what to do about it. This was her life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
β
Who are you then?"
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.
β
β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
β
When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (A Room of Oneβs Own)
β
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
β
β
William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Nightβs Dream)
β
Someone who smiles too much with you can sometime frown too much with you at your back.
β
β
Michael Bassey Johnson
β
We don't know for certain that she's a warlock, Jessie," said Will.
Jessamine ignored him. "Is it dreadful, being so evil? Are you worried you'll go to hell?" She leaned closer to Tessa. "What do you think the Devil's like?"
Tessa set her fork down. "Would you like to meet him? I could summon him up in a trice if you like. Being a warlock, and all.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β
I have found my star. She is beauty and grace. Elegance and goodness. My laughter in winter. She is courageous and strong. Bold and tempting. Unlike any other in all the universe, and I cannot touch her. I dare not even try." [Zarek]
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention': a rebel. ...And if enough people come to agree withβand followβthe REBEL, we now have a DEVIL. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have ... GREATNESS.
β
β
Nicholas Tharcher (Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt)
β
If there was a God. I would spit in his face for subjecting me to this. If there was a Devil, I would sell my sould to make it end. If there was something Higher that controlled out f***ing fates, I would tell it to take my fate and shove it up its fucking ass. Shove it hard and far, you motherf***er. Please end. Please end. Please end.
β
β
James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)
β
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
β
β
Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
β
Forgiveness is the best part of valor...Discretion is easy. It's finding the courage to forgive yourself and others that is hard. [Acheron]
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
β
Even if I were lying on the sun itself, I would be freezing there without you. (Zarek)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dance with the Devil (Dark-Hunter, #3))
β
With my background and genetic makeup,buddy, you're lucky I'm as normal as I am.
(Katra Agrotera)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Devil May Cry (Dark-Hunter, #11))
β
Readers have the right to say whatever the fuck they want about a book. Period. They have that right. If they hate the book because the MC says the word βdeliciousβ and the reader believes itβs the Devilβs word and only evil people use it, they can shout from the rooftops βThis book is shit and donβt read itβ if they want. If they want to write a review entirely about how much they hate the cover, they can if they want. If they want to make their review all about how their dog Foot Foot especially loved to pee on that particular book, they can."
[Blog entry, January 9, 2012]
β
β
Stacia Kane
β
I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.
β
β
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
β
I had such plans for this evening. The pursuit of blind drunkenness and wayward women was my goal. But alas, it was not to be. No sooner had I consumed my third drink in the Devil than I was accosted by a delightful small flower selling child who asked me for twopence for a daisy. The price seemed steep, so I refused. When I told the girl as much, she proceeded to rob me.β
βA little girl robbed you?β Tessa said.
βActually, she wasnβt a little girl at all, as it turns out, but a midget in a dress with a penchant for violence, who goes by the name of Six-Fingered Nigel.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β
When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols...
β
β
Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)
β
There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.
β
β
Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (FSG Classics))
β
Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:
Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.
Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.
Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.
Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.
I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.
Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces.
Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.
Amen
β
β
Anonymous
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Crowley had always known that he would be around when the world ended, because he was immortal and wouldnβt have any alternative. But he hoped it was a long way off. Because he rather liked people. It was major failing in a demon. Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. They seemed to have a talent for it. It was built into the design, somehow. They were born into a world that was against them in a thousand little ways, and then devoted most of their energies to making it worse. Over the years Crowley had found it increasingly difficult to find anything demonic to do which showed up against the natural background of generalized nastiness. There had been times, over the past millennium, when heβd felt like sending a message back Below saying, Look we may as well give up right now, we might as well shut down Dis and Pandemonium and everywhere and move up here, thereβs nothing we can do to them that they donβt do to themselves and they do things weβve never even thought of, often involving electrodes. Theyβve got what we lack. Theyβve got imagination. And electricity, of course. One of them had written it, hadnβt heβ¦βHell is empty, and all the devils are here.
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Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
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I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land... I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneerβs bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each otherβdevils dressed in angelsβ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
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Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)