This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The voice of the Devil. All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: 1. That man has two real existing principles; vis; a body and a soul. 2. That energy, called evil, is alone from body, and that reason, called good, is alone from the soul. 3. That God will torment man in eternity for the following energies. But the following contraries to these are true: 1. Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is bound or outward circumference of energy. 3. Energy is eternal delight." - William Blake
"Religious contention is the devil’s harvest." - Jean de La Bruyère
"Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. The charlatan is verbose and assumptive; the Pharisee is ostentatious, because he is a hypocrite. Pride is the master sin of the Devil; and the Devil is the father of lies." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant." - Frederick Evan Crane
"The human species... capacity for good is infinite, since they can, they desire, make room within themselves for divine Reality. But at the same time their capacity for evil is, not indeed infinite (since evil is always ultimately self-destructive and therefore temporary), but uniquely great. Hell is total separation from God, and the devil is the will to that separation... To be diabolic on the grand scale, one must, like Milton’s Satan, exhibit in a high degree all the moral virtues, except only charity and wisdom." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"Have something to do, so that the devil will always find you occupied." - Saint Jerome, aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymous, Hierom or Jerom NULL
"A sneer is the weapon of the weak. Like other devil’s weapons, it is always cunningly ready to our hand, and there is more poison in the handle than in the point." - James Russell Lowell
"Steady employment... keeps one out of mischief, for truly an idle brain is the devil's workshop." - Samuel Smiles
"The devil is very near at hand to those who, like monarchs are accountable to none but god for their actions." - Gustavus Adolphus, Gustavus II
"Liberty is from God; liberties form the Devil." - Berthold Auerbach
"Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves." - Anne Baxter
"As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another's virtues by detraction, and thine own vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, and devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hate thee." - Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
"An idle man’s brain is the devil’s workshop." - John Bunyan
"Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active; and if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy." - Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
"Most of the troubles of humanity are imaginary and should be laughed out of court. It is folly to cross a bridge until you come to it, or to bid the Devil good-morning until you meet him - perfect folly. All is well until the stroke falls, and even then, nine times out of ten, it is not so bad as anticipated. A wise man is the confirmed optimist." - Andrew Carnegie
"Neutral men are the devil's allies." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"There are times when it would seem as if God fished with a line, and the devil with a net." - Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
"The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed." - Jeremy Taylor
"It is the stupidity of our minds that prevents us from seeng existence as a mystery wilder than the dreams of Devil or God." - Llewelyn Powys
"When the Devil goes to mass he hides his tail." - Creole Proverbs
"Haste is of the devil, slowness is of God." - Islamic Proverbs
"The monks have no sadness. They wage war on the devil as though they were performing a dance." - John Chrysotom
"A nickname is the heaviest stone the devil can throw at a man." - Author Unknown NULL
"From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb, which says, "That the devil tempts all other men, but the idle men tempt the devil."" - Charles Caleb Colton
"Idleness is the badge of the gentry, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active, and, if it is not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy." - Edmund Burke
"It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. to take advantage of that is to break a man's spirit is devil's work." - George Bernard Shaw
"The Devil divides the word between Atheism and Superstition." - George Herbert
"The Devil never assails a man except he find him either void of knowledge, or of the fear of God." - George Herbert
"When a man argues for victory and not for truth, he is sure of just one ally, that is the devil. Not the defeat of intellect, but the acceptance of the heart is the only true object in fighting with the sword of spirit." - George MacDonald
"When a men sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of the ounce." - Henry Ward Beecher
"A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation." - Hosea Ballou
"Loneliness is dangerous… because if loneliness does not lead to God, it leads to the devil. It leads to the self." - Joyce Carol Oates
"An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possest with an error it is like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays hold on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last, though it has nothing but rubbish to defend." -
"The devil never tempts us with more success than when he tempts us with a sight of our own good actions." - Thomas Wilson
"The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose." - William Shakespeare
"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." - William Shakespeare
"As is well known, the Devil is the Prince of Time, and God is the King of Eternity. Time without end, that is Hell. Perfect presence, that is Eternity." - Denis de Rougemont
"I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"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." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this." - Gustave Flaubert
"To be sure, the Bible contains the direct words of God. How do we know? The Moral Majority says so. How do they know? They say they know and to doubt it makes you an agent of the Devil or, worse, a Lbr-l Dm-cr-t. And what does the Bible textbook say? Well, among other things it says the earth was created in 4004 BC (Not actually, but a Moral Majority type figured that out three and a half centuries ago, and his word is also accepted as inspired.) The sun was created three days later. The first male was molded out of dirt, and the first female was molded, some time later, out of his rib. As far as the end of the universe is concerned, the Book of Revelation (6:13-14) says: "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." … Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly." - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
"Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin." - Joris-Karl "J.K." Huysmans, pseudonym for Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans
"We must not measure the reality of love by feelings, but by results. Feelings are very delusive. They often depend on mere natural temperament, and the devil wrests them to our hurt. A glowing imagination is apt to seek itself rather than God. But if you are earnest in striving to serve and endure for God's sake, if you persevere amid temptation, dryness, weariness, and desolation, you may rest assured that your love is real. " - Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou