Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

William Shakespeare

The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose.

Devil | Purpose | Purpose | Scripture |

Thomas Wilson

The devil never tempts us with more success than when he tempts us with a sight of our own good actions.

Devil | Good | Success |

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.

Devil | Evil | Heart | Purpose | Purpose | Scripture | Soul | Witness |

Denis de Rougemont

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.

Devil | Eternity | God | Hell | Time | God |

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.

Beauty | Devil | Fighting | God | Heart | Beauty | God |

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Devil | Man | Think |

Gustave Flaubert

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this.

Devil | Ignorance | Nothing |

Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov

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.

Bible | Devil | Doubt | Earth | Force | Heaven | Majority | People | Revelation | Thinking | Time | Universe | Words | Bible |

Joris-Karl "J.K." Huysmans, pseudonym for Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans

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.

Devil | Life | Life | Mysticism |

Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou

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.

Devil | Feelings | Imagination | Love | Reality | Rest |

John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”

If the memory is annihilated, the devil is powerless, and it liberates us from a lot of sorrow, affliction and sadness.

Affliction | Devil | Memory |

José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez

To light one candle to God and another to the Devil is the principle of wisdom.

Devil | God | Light | God |

Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn

It is the sin of the soul to force young people into opinions - indoctrination is of the devil - but it is culpable neglect not to impel young people into experiences.

Devil | Force | Neglect | People | Sin | Soul |

Mary Baker Eddy

In describing what the Devil is, it says, "Evil; a lie; error; neither corporeality nor mind; the opposite of Truth; a belief in sin, sickness, and death; animal magnetism or hypnotism; the lust of the flesh, which saith: ‘I am life and intelligence in matter. There is more than one mind, for I am mind, - a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after its own image.

Belief | Devil | God | Intelligence | Life | Life | Lust | Mortal | God |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

It is a natural human tendency to take for granted the good things that happen and to regard as the workings of the devil the bad things. And that if a bad thing comes along, you say, my God, we ought to pass a law and do something. That’s a very natural human tendency. I think the remarkable thing, the thing that needs to be explained, is not why we’ve had a movement towards collectivism and towards more government control, because that’s been the natural state of mankind for thousands of years. The remarkable thing in my opinion, from an intellectual point of view, is how you ever managed to get a century or a century and a half in which the dominant philosophy was the opposite. That’s the exception.

Devil | Good | Government | Law | Mankind | Philosophy | Regard | Government | Think |

Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle.

Devil | Influence | Instinct | Power | Public | Reason |

Moroccan Proverbs

A devil takes one and makes two, a saint takes two and makes one.

Devil |