I Await The Devil's Coming Quotes

I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic. I am not generous. I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel—everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire.

May I never, I say, become that abnormal, merciless animal, that deformed monstrosity— a virtuous woman. Anything, Devil, but that.

Some people say that beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I'm sure I should not have at all minded being cursed a little.

I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings…

Some day the Devil will come to me and say: 'Come with me.' And I will answer: 'Yes.

Are there many things in this cool-hearted world so utterly exquisite as the pure love of one woman for another woman?

If it please the Devil, one day I may have happiness. That will be all-sufficient. I shall then analyze no more. I shall be a different being. But meanwhile I shall eat.

It is to be hoped you are not ‘intellectual,’ which is an unpardonable trait

It is day after day. It is week after week. It is month after month. It is year after year. It is only time going and going. There is no joy. There is no lightness of heart. It is only the passing of days. I am young and alone.

Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen. When you are nineteen there is no experience to tell you that all things have an end.

I shall have to miss forever some beautiful, wonderful things because of that wretched, lonely childhood. There will always be a lacking, a wanting -- some dead branches that never grew leaves. It is not deaths and murders and plots and wars that make life tragedy. It is day after day, and year after year, and Nothing. It is a sunburned little hand reached out and Nothing put into it.

It is the trivial little facts about anything that describe it the most effectively.

And always while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there’s a treachery in it.

But no matter how ferociously pitiable is the dried up graveyard, the sand and barrenness and the sluggish little stream have their own persistent individual damnation. The world is at least so constructed that its treasures may be damned each in a different manner and degree.

Here is the End for me, if I want it — here is the Ceasing, when I want it.

Nineteen years are as ages to you when you are nineteen. When you are nineteen, there is no experience to tell you that all things have an end. This aching pain has no end.

From insipid sweet wine; from men who wear moustaches; from the sort of people that call legs 'limbs'; from bedraggled white petticoats: Kind Devil, deliver me.

People are abominable creatures. There is nothing in the world that can become so maddeningly wearisome as people, people, people!

When I think of the exquisite love and sympathy which might be between a mother and daughter, I feel myself defrauded of a beautiful thing rightfully mine, in a world where for me such things are pitiably few.

Surely there must be in a world of manifold beautiful things something among them for me. And always, while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there's a treachery in it.

Sometimes I think I am a strange, strange creature -- something not of earth, nor yet of heaven, nor of hell. I think at times I am a little thing fallen on the earth by mistake: a thing thrown among foreign, unfitting elements, where every little door is closed -- every Why unanswered, and itself knows not where to lay its head. I feel a deadly certainty in some moments that the wild world contains not one moment of rest for me, that there will never be any rest, that my woman's-soul will go on asking long, long centuries after my woman's-body is laid in its grave.

I bite the olive again. Again the bitter salt crisp ravishes my tongue. "If this is vanity, vanity let it be." The golden moments flit by and I heed them not. For am I not comfortably seated and eating an olive! Go hang yourself, you who have never been comfortably seated and eating an olive!

An idle brain is the Devil’s workshop, they say. It is an absurdly incongruous statement. If the Devil is at work in a brain it certainly is not idle. And when one considers how brilliant a personage the Devil is, and what very fine work he turns out, it becomes an open question whether he would have the slightest use for most of the idle brains that cumber the earth.

As I stand among the barren gulches in these days and look away at the slow-awakening hills of Montana, I hear the high, swelling, half tired, half-hopeful song of the world. As I listen I know that there are things, other than the Virtue and the Truth and the Love, that are not for me. There is beyond me, like these, the unbreaking, undying bond of human fellowship—a thing that is earth-old.

A devil from the Outer Dark,” he grunted. “Oh, they’re nothing uncommon. They lurk as thick as fleas outside the belt of light which surrounds this world. I’ve heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them. Some find their way to Earth, but when they do, they have to take on earthly form and flesh of some sort. A man like myself, with a sword, is a match for any amount of fangs and talons, infernal or terrestrial. Come, my men await me beyond the ridge of the valley.

Had I been born a man I would by now have made a deep impression of myself on the world - on some part of it. But I am a woman, and God, or the Devil, or Fate, or whosoever it was, has flayed me of the thick outer skin and thrown me out into the midst of Life - has left me a lonely damned thing filled with the red, red blood of ambition and desire, but afraid to be touched, for there is no thick skin between my sensitive flesh and the and world s fingers. But I want to be touched.

When I was very little, it was cold and dreary also, but I was certain it would be different when I should grow and be ten years old. It must be very nice to be ten, I thought, - and one would not be nearly so lonesome. But when the years passed and I was ten it was just exactly as lonesome. And when I was ten everything was very hard to understand. But it will surely be different when I am seventeen, I said, - I will know so much when I am seventeen. But when I was seventeen it was even more lonely; and everything was still harder to understand. And again I said - faintly - everything will become clearer in a few years more, and I will wonder to think how stupid I have always been. But now the few years more have gone and here I am in loneliness that is more hopeless and harder to bear than when I was very little. Still, I wonder indeed to think how stupid I have been - and now I am not so stupid. I do not tell myself that it will be different when I am five-and-twenty. For I know that it will not be different. I know that it will be the same dreariness, the same Nothingness, the same loneliness.

I start reading every Elizabeth Wurtzel essay with optimism, like maybe finally she put her talent to writing about something than herself, and by the end of paragraph three that optimism has fled. So maybe you know Wurtzel has written an essay for New York Magazine? Probably you know, because for whatever reason, Wurtzel provokes a deep need in people to talk about how much they hate Wurtzel. So the comments are hundreds deep, Twitter is ablaze, and here I am, writing this blog post. And actually, she reminds me of Mary MacLane. She was a 19-year-old girl who wrote a memoir called I Await the Devil’s Coming in 1901 and it was an instant success. I wrote the introduction to the upcoming reissue, and there I talk about what a deeply interesting book it was. Not only “for its time,” but also it’s just kind of visceral and nasty and snarling, yet elegantly written. I kept thinking about MacLane, after the introduction got handed in and things went off to press. But this time, it wasn’t her writing that interested me, it was the way she never wrote anything very interesting ever again. She got stunted, somehow, winning all of that acclaim for being a young, sour thing. And I wondered if it was the fame that stunted her, because she spent the rest of her career spitting out copies of the memoir that made her famous. And it worked, until it didn’t.

For whom are you preserving your secret? For your grandsons? They are rich enough without it; they do not know the worth of money. Your cards would be of no use to a spendthrift. He who cannot preserve his paternal inheritance, will die in want, even though he had a demon at his service. I am not a man of that sort; I know the value of money. Your three cards will not be thrown away upon me. Come!” ... He paused and tremblingly awaited her reply. The Countess remained silent; Hermann fell upon his knees. “If your heart has ever known the feeling of love,” said he, “if you remember its rapture, if you have ever smiled at the cry of your newborn child, if any human feeling has ever entered into your breast, I entreat you by the feelings of a wife, a lover, a mother, by all that is most sacred in life, not to reject my prayer. Reveal to me your secret. Of what use is it to you? . . . May be it is connected with some terrible sin, with the loss of eternal salvation, with some bargain with the devil.... Reflect,—you are old; you have not long to live—I am ready to take your sins upon my soul. Only reveal to me your secret. Remember that the happiness of a man is in your hands, that not only I, but my children, and grandchildren will bless your memory and reverence you as a saint. . . .” The old Countess answered not a word. Hermann rose to his feet. “You old hag!” he exclaimed, grinding his teeth, “then I will make you answer!” With these words he drew a pistol from his pocket. At

Fame may pass over my head; money may escape me; my one friend may fail me; every hope may fold its tent and steal away; Happiness may remain a sealed book; every remnant of human ties may vanish; I may find myself an outcast; good things held out to me may suddenly be withdrawn; the stars may go out, one by one; the sun may go dark; yet still I may hold upright my head, if I have but my steak—and my onions.

I have the personality, the nature, of Napoleon, albeit a feminine translation.

And is it worth while to remain true to an ideal that offers only the vaguest hopes of realization? It is not philosophy. When one has made up one's mind that one wants a dish of hot stewed mushrooms, and set one's heart on it, should one scorn a handful of raw evaporated apples, if one were starving, for the sake of the phantom dish of hot stewed mushrooms? Should one say, Let me starve, but I will never descend to evaporated apples; I will have nothing but a dish of hot stewed mushrooms? If one is sure one will have the stewed mushrooms finally, before one dies of starvation, then very well. One should wait for them and take nothing else.

He had taught me much in four nights. I had learned to await his coming with excitement as well as dread; I had learned the treachery of my own flesh and was shocked by the frailty of my virtue. He had taught me that pain could be a part of pleasure and that pleasure could be a kind of pain.

If you think, fine world, that I am always interesting and admirable, always original, showing up to good advantage in a company of persons and all—why, then you are beautifully mistaken. There are times, to be sure, when I can rivet the attention of the crowd heavily upon myself. But mostly I am the very least among all the idiots and fools. I show up to the poorest possible advantage.

Though I am young and feminine—very feminine—I am not that quaint conceit, a girl: the sort of person that Laura E. Richards writes about, and Nora Perry, and Louisa M. Alcott,—girls with bright eyes, and with charming faces (they always have charming faces), standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet,—and all that sort of thing. I missed all that. And then, usually, if one is not a girl, one is a heroine—of the kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine is beautiful—eyes like the sea shoot opaque glances from under drooping lids—walks with undulating movements, her bright smile haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man—always with a man, eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements—indeed, I have never seen any one walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears. No, I am not a heroine. There never seem to be any plain heroines except Jane Eyre, and she was very unsatisfactory. She should have entered into marriage with her beloved Rochester in the first place. I should have, let there be a dozen mad wives upstairs. But I suppose the author thought she must give her heroine some desirable thing—high moral principles, since she was not beautiful. Some people say beauty is a curse. It may be true, but I’m sure I should not have at all minded being cursed a little. And I know several persons who might well say the same. But, anyway, I wish some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.

I have lived my nineteen years buried in an environment at utter variance with my natural instincts, where my inner life is never touched, and my sympathies rarely, if ever, appealed to. I never disclose the real desires or textures of my soul.

All the priests needed was the knowledge of what is and should be. That, at least, was how they thought they would gain salvation, escape the suffering of this world into another – even a fictional one. The priests wrote and copied books. They were the guardians of both knowledge and the belief that the world would one day be wiser. They believed that through the constant cultivation of the soul, it would one day be free. But they also believed that without effort, without hope and faith, nothing good awaited them. So their days were divided between writing and transcribing and praying. In their prayers and dreams at night, they imagined the world they hoped to one day to live in. In their prayers, they begged for good to come, for the world to change for the better, to mature. The two priests had known each other for a long time, and although they believed in and prayed to different deities, they were good friends who sat together without saying anything. And yet when they said nothing, they talked so much. They secretly hoped that one day there would be no need for their writings and that the spirit, as well as the flesh, would be completely free. That both word and knowledge would not be chained in parchments, but would soar through space, constantly filling it with new things. Their thoughts are not spoken aloud, as it is forbidden. Such thoughts were punished cruelly, for millennia, and even he who awoke was unable to defend them. The most lucrative resource on this earth, the human body and mind, is completely free... Such heresy!

To be a woman, young and all alone, is hard - hard! - is to want things, is to carry a heavy, heavy weight.

The art of Good Eating has two essential points: one must eat only when one is hungry, and one must take small bites.

An idle brain is the Devil's workshop, they say. It is an absurdly incongruous statement. If the Devil is at work in a rain it certainly is not idle.

-I am not good. I am not virtuous. I am not sympathetic. I am not generous. I am merely and above all a creature of intense passionate feeling. I feel - everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire.-

And then, usually, if one is not a girl one is a heroine - of the kind you read about. But I am not a heroine, either. A heroine is beautiful - eyes like the sea, shoots opaque glances from under drooping lids, walks with undulating movements, her bright smile haunts one still, falls methodically in love with a man - always with a man, - eats things (they are always called “viands”) with a delicate appetite, and on special occasions her voice is full of tears. I do none of these things. I am not beautiful. I do not walk with undulating movements - indeed, I have never seen any one walk so, except, perhaps, a cow that has been overfed. My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears. No. I am not a heroine.

But I am too young yet to think of peace. It is not peace that I want. Peace is for forty and fifty; I am waiting for my Experience. I am awaiting the coming of the Devil.

I want to share with you some other words from my friend Ray. I hope they will be as big an encouragement to you as they are to me. This is our ultimate accountability. Let’s get ready. Let’s live with purpose. Let’s live in repentance. Let’s be aware, moment by moment, that right now counts forever. What we think, what we say, what we feel, what we do and don’t do—we matter. We matter to Christ. We will matter forever. And very soon we will “report in.” This is solemnizing. This is dignifying. It is also encouraging. What if, as you stand there before Christ your Judge on that great and final day, surrounded by all the redeemed, each one awaiting his or her moment before the Lord—what if, standing there before him, he asks, “Everyone, I want to know who among you appreciated this person’s ministry? Who would like to bear witness to how he helped you for my sake?” And no one says anything. Total silence. Awkward silence. Everyone is embarrassed. Everyone is thinking, Would somebody please say something? You are standing there wondering, So my entire life comes down to this? What a failure I am! But then one voice does break that terrible silence. The Lord himself stands and says, “Well, I appreciated his ministry!” It’s an improbable scenario. But putting it like that does isolate the most urgent question of all. Is the approval of Jesus enough for you and for me? Do we love him enough, do we revere him enough, that his judgment is the one we’re living for? We care what others think. We want to please them (1 Cor. 10:33). But only one opinion will count finally and forever.5 And if I could add one more thing to what Ray has said here, it would be this: The devil has a file on us, to be sure. But the Lord’s got one too (Rev. 21:27).

The end of the pageant was truly amazing, although I don't quite remember how the story got there. It ended with the Second Coming of Christ and the Great White Throne Judgment during which the resurrected Jesus either allowed people to enter heaven or sent them off to hell. In a resounding voice, Jesus announced to the unsaved, "Depart from me. I never knew you," and waved them away. I vividly remember the pastor's son playing the devil and dragging these people off the stage begging and screaming, only to be thrown into the pits of hell that awaited them in the wings, where there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I am not strong. I cannot bear things. I do not want to bear things.

I wish to leave all my obscurity, my misery—my weary unhappiness—behind me forever. I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.