"Devil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God, compels us to bear testimony. Nevertheless that testimony has to be calm, gentle, kindly, given without Irritation or vehemence, and with no anxiety about consequences. Our Saviour, when He was accused of having a devil, answered quite simply, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... inflicted by the gaffs. General Jackson was very confident that his favorites would again be victorious, but there was no fight, to the great disappointment of all present, who doubtless possessed what has been called "the devil's nerve," which thrills with base enjoyment in the visible pain of man, beast, or bird. The long confinement in coops on the stages, or some other unknown cause, appeared to have deprived the Hermitage birds of their wonted pluck, and the Annapolis ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... pox came you to know of that? Gad, I believe the devil plays booty against himself, and tells you of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... swore to himself, as the blood rushed furiously to his head. For an instant he saw red. "Good Lord, what have I done to deserve such a slap in the face as this? What can be—But, what the devil's the matter with me? Of course, she's in town! I must be going batty. Certainly she's in town. She—but, even so, why should she have gone off like this without saying a word to me about it? She didn't mention it last night. Not a word. And she must have known then she was planning to ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... pinked; but his arm is out of its sling now. There is some devil's broth preparing, and he and Diane are the cooks. Le Brusquet, however, has sworn to put his ladle into it, and so we shall ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... hunt of the most thrilling kind, with a sunken Spanish galleon as its object, makes a subject of intense interest at any time, but add to that a band of desperate men, a dark plot and a devil fish, and you have the combination that brings strange adventures into the lives ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... Tom replied. 'The truth is, Bollingtons Limited and me, just me, have had a row. I didn't like their style, nor their manners. So the day before yesterday I told them to go to the devil——' ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the direction he took; but at last, looking out between the pillars and the concealing shrubs, I saw him. He was looking eagerly into the distance, with such a drawn, worn, painful expression, that for a moment my heart relented, and I thought I would let the poor devil go in peace. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... be termed 'the devil's race' by the people of Guyenne. This may have originated in a saying attributed to Richard himself in Aquitaine: 'It is customary in our family for the sons to hate their father. We come from the devil, and we shall return to ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... people having taken all their portable possessions and vanished to build another village elsewhere. The worthy Father spent some time chivying his flock about the forest, but in vain, and he returned home disgusted, deciding that the Creator, for some wise purpose, had dedicated the Bubis to the Devil. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Christian tenets than love all mankind. People sometimes express surprise that the mild doctrines of Christianity should be pressed into the service of persecution. What more natural? "We love you," says the theologian to the heathen, "but still you are children of the devil. We love men, but the human heart is desperately wicked. We love your souls, but we hate your bodies. We love you as brothers; but then God, who so loved the world as to give His Son to die for it, has left the vast ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... he conducted to the outside of the convent, and as he went away he exclaimed, "Devil take me, but either they are ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... "there was the devil of a time during the War with sabotage. Down in Brazil there was a field planes used to take off from to fly to Africa. But they'd take off, head out to sea, get a few miles offshore, and then blow up. We must've lost ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... so dreaded by the hard-worked doctor was like a triumphal reveille in Marcus's ears. And Robert Barton's muttered "poor devil" as he turned on his pillow would not have ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... statesmanlike conception of things to be. Two years he governed here, then was transferred to Maryland, and then in seven years came back to the James. He had not been liked there, but while he was gone Virginia had endured in his stead Sir Edmund Andros. That had been swapping the witch for the devil. Virginia in 1698 seems to have welcomed the ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... am trying now is that fountain-pen which is advertised to employ and accommodate itself to any kind of pen. So I selected an ordinary gold pen—a limber one—and sent it to New York and had it cut and fitted to this thing. It goes very well indeed—thus far; but doubtless the devil will be ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 'Then the devil has got a key to that apartment,' said Dorothee, 'for it could be nobody but he; I locked the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... look at the elder of her two attendants, who ceremoniously took off his hat to David and made a polite speech, in which the word enchante recurred. He was a dark man, with a short black beard, and full restless eye; some ten years older apparently than the other, who was a dare-devil boy ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... come to him, sir? The Lord wouldn't harm him for his father's sake; and as for the devil!—I tell you, sir, if he tried to fly away with him, he'd have to drop him before he'd gone a mile!" And Mark began blowing his nose violently, and getting so red that he seemed on the point ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... humanity. If a man must not fight for this, may he fight for anything? I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should still be there. I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country, I should still exist. But if what that devil dreams were true, I should not be—I should burst like a bubble and be gone. I could not live in that imbecile universe. Shall I not fight ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... my auditor, "your prejudices against this man are too strong. He's not perfect, I know; but even the devil is often painted blacker than he is. If you knew him, I rather think you would estimate him ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... constituents—sandstone and magnesia, the pyrites being slightly mixed, and silver showing itself in even smaller quantity. This is, in fact, the composition of the volcanic mud thrown up by the soufrieres at Watton Waven and in the Boiling Lake country, and it is found in solution as well in the lake water. The Devil's Billiard-table, within half a mile of the Boiling Lake, is composed wholly of this substance, which there assumes the character of stone in formation. Inquiries instituted on Monday morning revealed the fact that, except on the south-east, the mud ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... through life without knowing what it is to feel a sudden, even murderous, impulse to destroy the obstacle in their path; or seize, at all costs, that which they desire. Our ancestors called these uprushes the solicitations of the devil, seeking to destroy the Christian soul; and regarded them with justice as an opportunity of testing our spiritual strength. It is true that every man has within him such a tempting spirit; but its characters can better be studied in the Zoological Gardens than in the convolutions ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... d'arrondissement!'... Weisslicht had his mouth crammed with our titles!... All the same, at one o'clock in the morning, we were safely locked up in two nice little rooms in the town-hall at Boersweilen.... In quod, what!... With a probable indictment for complicity, espionage, high treason and the devil knows what hanging over our heads!... Only, in that case, gentlemen, you should not carry politeness so far as to release your captives from their handcuffs; and the windows of your cells ought not to ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... elaborate tabernacle work of the sixteenth century adorns the choir, and under each of the sixty-eight seats are carved misereres, making a larger collection than any other in the country. The subjects range from a horrible representation of the devil with a second face in the middle of his body to humorous pictures of a cat playing a fiddle, and a scold on her way to the ducking-stool in a wheel-barrow, gripping with one hand the ear of the man who ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... fable, that a certain king once permitted the devil to kiss his shoulder, and out of those shoulders sprang[10] two serpents that in the fury of their hunger aimed at his head and tried to get at his brain. He tried to extricate himself from their terrible power. He tore at them with his fingers and found that it was his own ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... cheek, which the artist had just hinted as a beauty rather than a deformity. You know, I suppose, that nursling imps addict themselves, after the fashion of young opossums, to these little excrescences. "Witch-marks" were good evidence that a young woman was one of the Devil's wet-nurses;—I should like to have seen you make fun of them in those days!—Then she had a brooch in her bodice, that might have been taken for some devilish amulet or other; and she wore a ring upon one of her fingers, with a red stone in it, that flamed as if the painter had dipped his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... and sung about love and home would find no echo in him. He was paralysed, dead in half of his soul, and would have to exist with the other half as well he could. He had done no wrong: he had done his best; he had not sold himself to the flesh or the devil, and, Calvinist as he was, he was tempted at times to question the justice of such a punishment. If he put his finger in the fire and got burnt, he was able to bow to the wisdom which taught him in that plain way that he was not to put his finger in ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... might have been low enough already; for Hazlet was, as we have seen, mean-hearted and malicious, and in him, although unknown to himself, the garb of the Pharisee but concealed the breast of the hypocrite. But yet Hazlet was free, and if Bruce had not undertaken the devil's work, might have been free to his life's end, from all gross forms of transgression—from all the more flagrant and open delinquencies that lay waste the inner sanctities of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... philosophers, and the poets. Post equitem sedet atra cura. Thus was Ferdinand Lopez mounted high on his horse,—for he had triumphed greatly in his marriage, and really felt that the world could give him no delight so great as to have her beside him, and her as his own. But the inky devil sat close upon his shoulders. Where would he be at the end of three months if Mr. Wharton would do nothing for him,—and if a certain venture in guano, to which he had tempted Sexty Parker, should not turn out the right way? He believed in the guano and he believed in Mr. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... a bewilderment. We knew nothing of the future question of temperance versus total abstinence; but after it had been extracted that Miss Newton regarded cards as the devil's books, the inconsistent little sister changed sides, and declared it narrow and evangelical to renounce what was innocent. Clarence argued that what might be harmless for others might be dangerous for such as himself, and that his real difficulty in making even a mental ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is commonly called the Conqueror; he was, moreover, the illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, surnamed le Diable. An opera, we hear, was invented on this subject, and full of miraculous events, called "Robert the Devil," showing its traditional character. Therefore shall we be also justified in saying that Edward the Confessor, Saxons and all, up to the time of the union of the houses of York and Lancaster under Henry VII.—the new historical period ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... secrecy are obvious. Women, in the last analysis, can prevail against men in the great struggle for power and security only by keeping them disarmed, and, in the main, unwarned. In a pitched battle, with the devil taking the hindmost, their physical and economic inferiority would inevitably bring them to disaster. Thus they have to apply their peculiar talents warily, and with due regard to the danger of arousing the foe. He must be attached ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... care? Mak lot trouble for Giova whose heart already ache plenty. No one love heem, only Beppo and Giova. No one love Giova, only Beppo; but some day Beppo he keel Giova now HE is dead, for Beppo vera large, strong bear—fierce bear—ogly bear. Even Giova who love Beppo is afraid Beppo. Beppo devil bear! ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... But some one will say: "That is the very ideal of wickedness: all good in man comes of overcoming nature, and doing violence to natural cravings: live according to nature, and you will go straight to the devil." I answer: "Live according to a part of your nature, and that the baser and lower, though also the more impetuous and clamorous part, and you will certainly go where you say: but live up to the whole of your nature, as explained in the last paragraph, and you will ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... of Denmark fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer, The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, And the devil of Martin Luther sat By the stout monk's side ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... "Why the devil," he cried, "haven't you done what you were told to do? This is a pretty servant of yours. Why hasn't he brought the things back as ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... converted. So he said so. James was no more afraid of a new political theory than he was of ghosts, and he was no more afraid of proclaiming a new theory, or an old one, than he was of being a ghost. I think he would have listened with an open mind to the devil's account of heaven, and I'm sure he would have heard ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... a devil, that man," Starling whispered, confidentially. "He would blow out my brains or yours or his own, without a second's hesitation, if it suited him. He hasn't any nerves nor any fear nor any pity. He will laugh at me—he won't understand, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was fully admitted, and which became the subject of heated polemic. Greek philosophers did not hesitate to establish a parallel entirely favourable to Mithraism, while Christian apologists insisted that such resemblances were the work of the Devil, a line of argument which, as we have seen above, they had already adopted with regard to the older Mysteries. It is a matter of historical fact that at one moment the religious fate of the West hung in the balance, and it was an open question whether Mithraism ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... canvas around, so we should be sheltered. I felt so much better and thought so much better of him that I could laugh and chat gayly. "Now, tell me," he asked, as he fastened the canvas to a wheel, "didn't you think I was an old devil at first?" "Yes, I did," I answered. "Well," he said, "I am; so you guessed right." After I put the children to bed, we sat by the fire and talked awhile. I told him how I happened to be gadding about in "such onconsequential" style, and he told me stories of when ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... believe so much or to know so many facts that aren't so; but this is the devil of ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... rotten cold-blooded way, but I LOVED her. I'd have given the soul out of my body to save her from harm. I'd have stood by without a word and let her marry you, because you could have given her the sort of time she ought to have had, and I was only a poor devil without a penny to bless himself with. But it wouldn't have been ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... orisons: "My head aches, I shan't be comfortable until I have had a drink." Certes, such gluttony putteth a woman to shame, for from it she becomes a ribald, a disreputable person and a thief. The tavern is the Devil's church, where his disciples go to do him service and where he works his miracles. For when folk go there they go upright and well spoken, wise and sensible and well advised, and when they return they cannot hold themselves upright nor speak; they are ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... man drew the bolt, while Dolores' heart stood still, and she prepared herself for the danger; for she knew well enough that the faithful old servant feared his master much more than he feared the devil and all evil spirits, and would prevent her from passing, even with ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... tell you, John Wilkes, or John the Devil, or whatever your name maybe, that if you don't at once take yourself off, I will let daylight into you," and he drew his sword, as did ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... historiographer in chief to the Whigs, and the great prophet of Whiggery which never had or will have a prophet, vehemently judged that a man who could pass over from the celestial Whigs to the infernal Tories must be a traitor false as Judas, an apostate black as the Devil." Always a boy at heart, and singularly careless of his appearance, Macaulay was so phenomenally successful in every direction that envy may account for most personal criticism not inspired by recognised ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the unrepentant malefactor by His side cried but, "If thou be Christ, save thyself and us." (Luke 23:35-39.) How literally did those railers and mockers quote the very words of their father the devil (see John 8:44). See further, page ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... not attempt to meet the situation. We left it to the devil—or Madame. And she, with the lofty serenity of one who through long and grievous misunderstanding has won home at last, was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... a great big flaming poster. Tafila Copper Mines; capital, four millions. And my esteemed friend, Henri, has not a five-franc piece to keep the devil out of ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... certainty which one you mean,' whispered my would-be informant. Stooping and glancing along my arm with the precision of a Kentucky rifleman, I brought my finger to bear directly upon the head of the unknown, who, as the devil would have it, at this critical juncture turned her head and encountered the deadly aim which we were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... by a double knot, drew the cravat over his own shoulders, and the aide-de-camp holding up the rebel's heels, till he felt him pretty easy, the lieutenant with a powerful chuck drew up the poor devil's head as high as his own (cheek by jowl), and began to trot about with his burden like a jolting cart-horse,—the rebel choking and gulping meanwhile, until he had no further solicitude about sublunary affairs—when the lieutenant, giving him a parting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... man clothed with brief but supreme authority, such as the command of a man-of-war, in those days when for months and months he was away from all control of his superiors and out of reach of public censure, is more frequently apt to listen to the promptings of the devil, which more or less attack every man, especially when he ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... steed saw the cow's tail wag, And eke the black cow-horn; He stamped, and stared, and away he ran, As the devil had him borne. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... unnecessary to the main story of the horrible love of the hero and heroine; like the murders of Levidulcia and Sebastian in Tourneur's "Atheist's Tragedy," and the completely unnecessary though extremely pathetic death of young Marcello in Webster's "White Devil;" until the plays were brought to a close by the gradual extermination of all the principal performers, and only a few confidants and dummies remained to bury the corpses which strewed the stage. Imaginary monsters ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... period of almost incredible supineness, and there was arising a large body of clergy full of faith and zeal and good works, but quite unacquainted with science, who frankly regarded Darwin as Antichrist, and Huxley and Tyndall as emissaries of the devil. Against evolutionists there was left unused no weapon that ignorant prejudice could find, whether that prejudice was inspired by a lofty zeal for what it conceived to be the highest interests of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... time. How often have we,—we poets, politicians, philosophers, family-men,—found charming excuses for our own rascalities in the monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how loudly have we abused the times and our neighbours! All this devil's logic did Mrs. Catherine, lying wakeful in her bed on the night of the Marylebone fete, exert ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fled, at least all but one, who came rushing at us with his lance at the charge. I caught hold of his horse, which was half mad with terror, and my chum was going to run the rider through when he noticed the awful glaze in his eyes, and we saw that the poor devil was dead. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... gave all, for whom I sacrificed all, did she, too, forsake me? Ah, no! you will tell me Italy is free. But I did not free her! She waits only to put on in Venice her tiara. And for that other one, that fair Austrian woman, that devil whom I serve and adore, that yellow-haired witch who brewed her incantations in my holiest raptures,—she did not then play me foul, and falsely feign love to win me to disgrace? May all the woes in Heaven's hands fall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of course that such appeals were usually idle, but he did not consider Nora an ordinary person. His decision was to venture it. He drew his horse close to hers. " Nora," he said, " do you know that you are raising the very devil? " ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... yet it may be so, for anything which I know to the contrary. If there should be another world it will go hard with me, that is certain. I shall never escape for what I have done to Heartfree. The devil must have me for that undoubtedly. The devil! Pshaw! I am not such a fool to be frightened at him neither. No, no; when a man's dead there's an end of him. I wish I was certainly satisfied of it though: for there are some men of learning, as I have heard, of a different opinion. It is ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... he had her than the other one, for he's one of ourselves anyhow, and the devil you know is better than the devil ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... give you this reason,' said young Saint-Pol; 'it is because that devil who slew my brother will have ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... invention of typography. Many of them, as it may naturally be imagined, were very averse to the progress of this invention, as well as the brief-men, or writers, who lived by their manuscripts for the laity. They went so far as to attribute this blessed invention to the devil, and some of them warned their hearers from using such ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... rest in Davy Jones's locker this many a day, as likely as not. That old man came flying to Colebrook three years ago all in black broadcloth (had lost his wife lately then), getting out of a third-class smoker as if the devil had been at his heels; and the only thing that brought him down was a letter—a hoax probably. Some joker had written to him about a seafaring man with some such name who was supposed to be hanging about some girl or other, ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... shall be to advertise you that Mistress Anne is changed from that she was at when we three were last together. Wherefore I pray you that ye be no devil's sakke, but according to the truth ever justify, as ye shall make answer before God; and do not suffer her in my absence to be married to any other man. I must go to my master, wheresoever he be, for the Lord Privy Seal desireth much to speak with me, whom if I should ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... him: "Mr. President, the selection of a Chief Justice is one of the greatest duties you have to perform. You can make a mistake; we can raise the devil in Congress; but with a capable Supreme Court standing steady and firm, doing its full ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... sorry to find, however, that his right honourable friend had learned to draw such a bill of indictment, and moreover to crowd it with all the technical epithets which disgraced our statute-book: such as false, malicious, wicked, by the instigation of the devil, and the like. He added, that having been taught by his right honourable friend that no revolt of a nation was caused without provocation, he could not help rejoicing at the success of a revolution resting upon the same basis with our ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... character and amiability in such moving terms, that he wept maudlin tears of sensibility over his theme; and when Dobbs was gone, drank some more grog, and took to railing and cursing again by himself; and then mounted the stairs unsteadily, to see "what the devil Doyle and the other —— old witches were about in poor ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... and, placing my hands beneath her arms, jerked with all my strength. She fell backwards, and, in her effort to save herself, most fortunately dropped the knife. Then we flung ourselves upon her. Heavens! the strength of that she-devil! Nobody who has not experienced it could believe it. She fought and scratched and bit, and at one time nearly mastered the two of us. As it was she did break loose. She rushed at the bed, sprung on ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... d—n you! If you want plain speaking you shall have it! She has fifty thousand, and she is in my house; well, I am this kind of man! I'll not let that money go out of the house without having a fling at it! It is the devil's luck has sent her here, and it will be my folly will send her away—if she goes. Which she does not if I am the kind of man I think I am. So there for you! ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... said once he aimed to give this rifle gun to me. Mebbe he was foolin', but I don't believe he owed ole Nathan so much, an', anyways," he muttered grimly, "I reckon Uncle Jim ud kind o' like fer me to git the better of that ole devil—jes a LEETLE, anyways." ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... buildings standing in an arid desert of sand, and to me it suggested the city of Semipalatinsk—a wretched, verdure-less town in southern Siberia, colloquially known to Russian army officers as "the Devil's Sand-box." Thriving and prosperous Tampa may be, but attractive or ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... thee, Stella? I were a devil if I did. What ails my girl at love? What is it to thee? Keep away from that raging fire. Souse it with every stream of reason and honour. Heap the ice of the Pole on it, for it is not only hell itself but feeds the ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... out of the Merchants' Exchange as though the devil was at his heels walloping him at every jump. It was four blocks to the Marine National Bank, but the California Street cable car took him there in four minutes. Gasping and perspiring Cappy trotted into the cashier's office, where for ten precious ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... it!" cried Schriften, who now went forward to where the seamen were standing at the gangway. "News for you, my lads!" said he; "we've a bit of the holy cross aboard, and so we may defy the devil!" ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... broad. She felt “no great reverence for Kings.” In politics she was a Whig. “I was born and bred in Whiggism,” which word, she tells us, was synonymous to “fool and rascal,” from Johnson’s lips. It may be added that Johnson also said, “the Devil was the first Whig.” She confessed she had no great appetite for politics, though she expressed her views pretty freely on the subject. In 1790 the titles of nobility were suppressed in France, and Anna Seward disapproved of Burke’s vindication ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... know or have heard to have said that when he was dead, his soul should be hanged on the top of a pole and "run God, run Devil, and fetch it that would have it," or to like effect, or that hath otherwise spoken against the being or immortality of the soul of men, or that a man's soul should die and become like the soul of a beast, or such like, and when and where was ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... for a moment. "I'll tell you what: there's a great Bryanite meeting to-night, down at the Chapel. I expect there'll be a devil hunt." ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after a salmon-bone had stuck in his throat, from old prophecies which Malgon the Druid had made against him, after Cormac turned against the Druids on account of his manner of adoring God without them. For that reason the Devil (Diabul) tempted him (Malgenn) through the instigation, until he caused his death. It was Cormac who composed the precepts to be observed by kings, the manners, tribute, and ordinations of kings. He was a wise ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... "What the devil's this?" said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels. "Young Oliver! Come home to your poor ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the only painting she ever gets is when Hudner lays her alongside some British ship to discharge a foreign cargo of lumber into the lime-juicer; then her mate steals all the paint in the Britisher's lazaret. The poor, unfortunate devil! He has to do something to make a showing with the Penelope's owner! I tell you, Matt, I know this man Hudner! He's as thrifty as an Armenian and as slippery as a skating rink. He's laying to stab you, boy. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Neapolitan knew must mean the theatre of San Carlo, the paradise of his countrymen, but he never could fancy his wife should be there in his absence. She was though, for presently the boy said, "And there I see the woman in the blue jacket, with a man in a red coat whispering into her ear." "The devil!" muttered the Neapolitan ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... hammering on Peter's breast—"doing right is the solution of all the difficulties into which we get ourselves tied up by shilly-shallying and doing wrong. If Ashley were to hang fire you wouldn't know where the devil you were. But now that he's going straight, it leaves you free ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... scheme from Dublin, I give you the earliest notice, how you may retrieve the DECUS ET TUTAMEN,[23] which you have sacrificed by permits in bubbles. This project is founded on a Parliamentary security, besides, the devil is in it, if it can fail, since a dignitary of the Church[24] is at the head on't. Therefore you, who have subscribed to the stocking insurance, and are out at the heels, may soon appear tight about the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... describes as "the leaf-gold which the devil has laid over the backside of ambition, to make ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... scratches on my face, and by others you cannot see, he is in league with the Evil One, or I am no holy Friar. He played a tune on his pipe and I danced—danced!—think of it! And all in the bramble bushes! Your son is plainly lost; I hesitate to think what it will cost you to save his soul from the devil's clutch.' ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... meetings, and services tend to lessen sin in the world? It may make men conceal it. Where would you find more hardness to a fallen one than you would in a congregation of worshippers of the Church of this day? Surely this hardness is of the devil, and they who ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; but Syme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edge of the crazy table. He read the message, "You must go on. This devil ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... is just half a chance, if you keep your head. Remember: nine soldiers out of ten are born fools. (He hides behind the curtain, looking out for a moment to say, finally) If they find me, I promise you a fight—a devil of a fight! (He disappears. Raina takes of the cloak and throws it across the foot of the bed. Then with a sleepy, disturbed air, she opens ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... foisted upon China by the Powers is a college. At the head of this college is a Foreign Devil and among its professors are six Foreign Devils. The court of last resort, however, is the Governor of Shantung, who is a native of China. He, quite recently, filled the Foreign Devils with indignation because he expelled from the college a student who refused to subscribe to the teachings of ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... transformations can be wrought by the laws of Nature on the commixture of common elements, shall we despair that transformations yet more glorious may be wrought in human souls now thwarted and blackened by the malice of the devil, when they are subjected to the far diviner and far more stupendous alchemy of ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... story-tellers and heavy suppers, that when I spied out a corner in a hedge, a bush, a barn, a meadow, or when, on passing through a hamlet, I caught the smell of a good parsley omelet. . I sent to the devil all the rouge, frills, flounces and perfumery, and, regretting a plain dinner and common wine, I would gladly have closed the mouth of both the head cook and the butler who forced me to dine when I generally sup, and to sup when a generally go to bed, but, especially the lackeys that envied me every ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rejected it. Chinatown was his aim; once there and under the protection of his Tong, Hoang knew that he was safe. He knew the hiding-places that the See Yup Association provided for its members—hiding places whose very existence was unknown to the police of the White Devil. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... run every risk, senhor, to come and warn you of danger, in the hope that you will be lenient to us," he began. "That man in there, senhor, is the very devil. Don't you recollect him? You took him in the Andorinha, off the Havannah. He was really her master, though he pretended ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... you call 'One Steinbock'? Do you mean a young Livonian who was a pupil of mine?" cried Stidmann ironically. "I may tell you, monsieur, that he is a very great artist. It is said of me that I believe myself to be the Devil. Well, that poor fellow does not know that he is capable of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... truth, the devil and the conjuror did not always play upon the square, but often took the most unfair advantages of each other. There is more than one instance of bad faith in the history of that renowned enchanter, Peter Fabel. On one occasion, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Hope," though it lies prodigiously far from any sea. It apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however, much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... pleased with the scheme. He wished to be considered a dare-devil sort of fellow, and he felt that it would give him a great reputation if he fought a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... of fact, I believe the preachers leave the city in the summer and let the Devil do his worst. Whether it is believed that the Devil has less power in warm weather, I do not know. But I do know that, as the mercury rises, the anxiety about souls decreases, and the hotter New York becomes, the cooler hell seems ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the cross. And why that agony in the garden? Why was His sweat as it were great drops of blood? Why the repeated prayer, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me?" How many dishonoring explanations have been written of the Gethsemane suffering, as if He was afraid to die or that the devil tried to kill Him there to prevent his death on the cross, and that He feared the devil. But what was it? He suffered in Himself. His holy soul shrank from that which a holy God must hate, that which He hated—SIN. He was about to be made sin and He knew no sin. What suffering this produced in the ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... astonished at her dancing. Why, the girl was an artist! As good a figure, as active a tripper, as high a kicker, as dainty a pair of ankles as he had seen in a long time, not to mention a keen pair of eyes with the devil peeping from them. To his surprise, he found Terpy stony to his advances. Her eyes glittered ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... her father, whose temperament in her care-free, happy-go-lucky way she understood very well (better than Emmy did), and that while she carried into her affairs a necessarily more delicate refinement than his she had still the dare-devil spirit that Pa's friends had so much admired. She had more humour than Emmy—more power to laugh, to be detached, to be indifferent. Emmy had no such power. She could laugh; but she could only laugh seriously, or at obviously funny things. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... safety, which Montesquieu defines to be civil liberty, when they consider how precarious a person a provincial governor is, especially a good one? And how likely a thing it is, if he is a good one, that another may soon be placed in his stead, possessed of the principles of the Devil, who for the sake of holding his commission which is even now pleaded as a weighty motive, will execute to the full the orders of an abandon'd minister, to the ruin of those liberties which we are told are now so secure ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Casey canted a malevolent eye upward and went lurching by at top speed. The car bulked black for a moment, dimmed, and merged into the fleeing cloud that presently seemed no more than a dust-devil whirling across the mesa. At the second signpost Casey slowed, his eyes ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... man. He liked to go to conventions and discuss his work with his colleagues. He was, in addition, a man who would never let anything go once he had got hold of it, unless he was convinced that he was up a blind alley. And, as far as Dr. Ch'ien was concerned, that took a devil of ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Lichonin," he said squeamishly. "We have gathered together in our own close company, yet you must needs drag in some vagabond. The devil knows ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the hand of persecution, and pointing, as its friends believed, to the visible interposition of heaven. How could the accusations against Port Royal be true, seeing what God Himself had done on its behalf? “This place, which men say is the devil’s temple, God makes His house. Men declare that its children must be taken out of it, and God heals them there. They are threatened with all the furies; God loads them with His favours.” This was Pascal’s own language on ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... say you will have heard of the battle fought by our army on the 13th instant. It commenced about 1 p.m., and fasted till after dark. It was a devil of a battle, and many hard knocks and wounds were received, as the casualty list will show. The Sikhs fought with the greatest gallantry, and, as for our men and infantry generally, they were quite heroes. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fancy willingly follows the bold poet. In the short space of three hours he makes his 'Faust' [15] live through four-and-twenty years, in order 'to conquer, with sweet pleasure, despair.' The earth becomes too small for this dramatist. Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, have to respond to his inquiries. Like some of his colleagues, Marlowe is a sceptic: he calls Moses a 'conjurer and seducer of the people,' and boasts that, if he were to try, he would succeed in establishing a better religion than the one he sees around himself. The apostle ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the light, his face upturned. It still wore the softer expression of those last few moments. Lenore waved her hand, and he smiled. The moment was natural. Youth to youth! Lenore felt it. She marveled that he did not. A sweet devil of ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Temple is in there raising a devil of a row," said Cyrus. He gazed at me in a bewildered fashion. "If it were Peggy I could understand it," he said, helplessly, and I knew how distinctly he saw the old-maid aunt as he gazed at me. "She's jealous of you, Elizabeth," he went on in the same dazed fashion. "She's jealous of you ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace and expulsion from society.' JOHNSON. 'Then, sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is NOT known. Don't let him go to the devil ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Lichts never being able to begin to do anything all at once), and, increasing the distance with every line, leaves them hopelessly behind at the finish. Miss McQuhatty protested against this change, as meeting the devil half way, but the minister carried his point, and ever after that she rushed ostentatiously from the church the moment a psalm was given out, and remained behind the door until the singing was finished, when she returned, with a rustle, to her seat. Run line had on her the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... life must be as pronounced on the negative side as the positive, in its denials as in its affirmations, and that it is futile to attempt to obey God unless one at the same time renounce all co-partnery with the devil. Circumcision is the symbol of this renunciation, and it is only as such it has any radical spiritual significance. Till he was circumcised, it is said, God did not speak to Abraham in Hebrew. Not till then is sacredness of speech, any more ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... having run fifty yards, he met Yates, who, alarmed at the report, was hastily retracing his steps. It was not necessary to inquire what was the matter. The enemy were in full view, pressing forward with great rapidity, and "devil take the hindmost," was the order of the day. Yates would not outstrip Downing, but ran by his side, although in so doing, he risked both of their lives. The Indians were well acquainted with the country, and soon took ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... tragedies—a wonderful maze, in which joy groans, and there is something wild even about love, and the magic of forgiveness and the warmth of happiness succeed to cruel storms of rage. She was a siren that can both kiss and devour; laugh like a devil, or weep as angels can. She could concentrate in one instant all a woman's powers of attraction in a single effort (the sighs of melancholy and the charms of maiden's shyness alone excepted), then in a moment rise in fury like ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... day, indeed, that a gentleman was hanged. So handsome a man, too, as the rumours went, and so dare-devil a fellow; friend of the noble family of Landale, and a murderer of its most respected member. Could justice ever have served up a spicier dish whereon ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... this state of insensibility she remained until her decease, which occurred shortly after. Although it was evident that she had been seized with convulsions, and that these were the cause of her death, the old women were careful to promulgate, and their daughters to transmit the story, that the Devil had appeared to her in propria persona, and shaken her in pieces, as a punishment for her crimes. The building was purchased by Harvard ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... that it was to constitute a corruption fund, to be put into the saloons. And these men were thus made candidates, to give respectability to the saloonkeepers' party, and, though they did not go into the saloons themselves, they must pay toll to the devil all ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... at a little distance from here, so that if it is not requesting too much of you maybe you will accompany me thither, so that we may talk at our leisure. I would gladly accompany you to your ship instead of urging you to come to my apartments, but I must tell you I am possessed of a devil of a fever, so that my physician hath forbidden me to be out ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... with a good story when he has been taken by surprise. Honesty isn't as handy with the tongue. I can only say that something—I don't say somebody—has put these books into a devil of a mess, and I'm doing ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... accipitres the most remarkable is the brown owl, which, from its hideous yell, has acquired the name of the "Devil-Bird."[1] The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.[2] There is a popular legend in connection with it, to the effect that ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the former and the success of the latter" and 'implementation' as "The fruitless struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill promises made by the rich and ignorant"; 'flowchart' becomes "to obfuscate a problem with esoteric cartoons". Revised and expanded from "The Devil's DP Dictionary", McGraw-Hill 1981, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Trail instead of Broadway. But I reckon the West will need just such men as you long after the frontier fort has become a central point in the country's civilized area. And, blast you, Clarenden, blast your very picture! No man can help liking you. Not even the devil if he had the chance. Not one man in ten thousand would dare to make that trip right now. You've got the courage of a colonel and the judgment of a judge. Go to Santa Fe! We may meet you coming back. If we do, and ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... cultivated nobles of Provence; popes stamping out the seed of enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the masterpieces of classical literature to make way for their own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parchment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk in sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal—these still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. Therefore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were fragmentary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at their work in this country." Faith, I soon found out for my two days' pay in one, I had to do two days' work in one, and pay two weeks' board in one, and at the end of a month, I found myself no better off in pocket than in Nova Scotia; while the devil a bone in my body that didn't ache with pain, and as for my nose, it took to bleeding, and bled day and night entirely. Upon my soul, Mr. Slick,' said he, 'the poor labourer does not last long in your country; what with new rum, hard labour, and hot weather, you'll see ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... no reason to suppose that the fondness for this diversion abated, except during the short 'trump or triumph of the fanatic suit'—in the hard times of Old Oliver—when undoubtedly cards were styled 'the devil's books.' But, indeed, by that time they had become an engine of much fraud and destruction; so that one of the early acts of Charles II.'s reign inflicted large penalties on those who should use cards ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... so in despair he thus addressed her:—"Ruth, let us break from this unreasonable bondage. I will give up my religion, and thou shalt give up thine; and we will marry and go into the Church of England, and go to the Devil together." And they fulfilled the resolution, the Puritan historian says, so far as going into the Church, and marrying, and staying there for life. But probably the ministers thought it to be another case ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a wicket marked "Accountant." The accountant was a tall, cool devil. The very sight of him rattled me. My ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Like other disciplines the study of theology at that time was affected by a considerable portion of dry-rust. Orthodoxy ruled the cathedra. With that as a weapon, the student must be trained to meet all the wiles of the devil and perversions of the heretics. Its greatest Danish exponent, Jesper Brochman, had just passed to his reward, but his monumental work, The System of Danish Theology, remained after him, and continued to serve as an authoritative textbook for many ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the servant is careless enough to close the valve before the wood is reduced to charcoal, then the master sleeps his last sleep, being suffocated in three or four hours. When the door is opened in the morning he is found dead, and the poor devil of a servant is immediately hanged, whatever he may say. This sounds severe, and even cruel; but it is a necessary regulation, or else a servant would be able to get rid of his master ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... safe and secure on their pedestals? The gods were overthrown for a sign that the devils had left the fool's body, Joseph answered. But why, Dan replied, didn't three statues fall?—a statue for each devil—and whither did the devils go? That one statue should fall was enough for a sign, Joseph said, but no more would he say, for his father's incredulity irritated him, and seeing that he had angered his son, Dan stretched his ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... equally simple faith, who set about putting it to more practical use than to gild an hour with an old legend. They told how the spook of the Spanish captain haunted the wreck, and that the gold was guarded by a dragon in the shape of a monstrous horned and mottled frog, or some other devil of the sea, to which the diver did seriously incline, but not to make him give up the undertaking. He prudently, however, consulted with an old Indian witch, and so received the devil's good word, and piously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... gone too far. He cursed himself inwardly for a fool. Why the devil didn't that villain, Bududreen, come! He should have been along to act his part half an ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... day, as he was reading, he found in an old book of magic that for which he had long been seeking—the formula for summoning the devil. When night came a storm had risen, but caring not for that he hurried away to the lonely mountain Kremenki. There, in a rudely constructed hut, he began ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various |
