Devilish Quotes

• The ugly is very appealing to man. It's instinct. One shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There's a devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror.

  Sonya Levien

  Men, Fascination, Looks

  55 Copy quote

• To sin is a human business, to justify sins is a devilish business.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Honesty, Business, Integrity

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• Every man has his devilish minutes.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Men, Sin, Minutes

  8 Copy quote

• The devil's most devilish when respectable.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Respect, Witty, Devil

  'Aurora Leigh' (1857) bk. 7, l. 105

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• There is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you'll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death.

  William Shakespeare

  Judging, Mercy, Fetters

  William Shakespeare, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, Charles Symmons (1842). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: From the Text of the Corrected Copies of Steevens and Malone, with a Life of the Poet”, p.84

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• To err is human, to repent divine; to persist devilish.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Motivational, Mistake, Divine

  Benjamin Franklin (2013). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.88, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Envy, Feels, Savour

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• It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, 3 hours in a seasick steamer, & after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak 3 times, & then be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

  John Masefield

  Home, Sick, Navy

  "Letters of John Masefield to Florence Lamont".

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• I most sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its fineness up through so devilish a fire.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Fire, Race, Black

  "Darkwater: The Givens Collection".

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• When truth kills truth, O devilish holy fray!

  William Shakespeare

  Holy, Fray

  William Shakespeare (1962). “A Midsummer Night's Dream (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.35, Sparklesoup LLC

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• Little sins carry with them but little temptations to sin, and then a man shews most viciousness and unkindness, when he sins on a little temptation. It is devilish to sin without a temptation; it is little less than devilish to sin on a little occasion. The less the temptation is to sin, the greater is that sin.

  Thomas Brooks

  Men, Temptation, Littles

  Thomas Brooks (1810). “Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices: Being a Companion for Christians of All Denominations”, p.31

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• There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Wisdom, Thinking, History

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• Countless candles dribbled with hot wax, and their flames, like little flags, fluttered in the unchartered currents of air. Thousands of lamps, naked, or shuttered behind coloured glass, burned with their glows of purple, amber, grass-green, blue, blood red and even grey. The walls of Gormenghast were like the walls of paradise or like the walls of an inferno. The colours were devilish or angelical according to the colour of the mind that watched them. They swam, those walls, with the hues of hell, with the tints of Zion. The breasts of the plumaged seraphim; the scales of Satan.

  Mervyn Peake

  Wall, Purple, Glasses

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Gormenghast”, p.226, The Overlook Press

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• There is purpose in pain; otherwise it were devilish.

  Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

  Pain, Purpose

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• It is human to err, but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

  Saint Augustine

  Errors, Humans

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• I don't recall the so-called devilish things I do. But there are considerable amounts.

  John Travolta

  Amount, Recalls

  4 Copy quote

• I like devilish, thorny, dirty, mean roles, muck and mire, unbelievably sad, unbelievably happy, burdened. Inner conflict - that's where drama is.

  Amanda Plummer

  Drama, Dirty, Mean

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!

  Henry James

  Dream, Believe, Night

  Henry James (2015). “Roderick Hudson”, p.45, Booklassic

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• Just as meekness is in all our virtues, so is pride in all our sins. Whatever its momentary and alluring guise, pride is the enemy, "the first of the sins." One reason to be particularly on guard against pride is that "the devilish strategy of Pride is that it attacks us, not in our weakest points, but in our strongest. It is preeminently the sin of the noble mind." Not only of the noble mind, but also of the semi-righteous.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Pride, Mind, Enemy

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• Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him: because evil is but a chance misfortune, an illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Essence, Evil

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• Roguery is thought by some to be cunning and laughable: it is neither; it is devilish.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Rogues, Cunning, Laughable

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• Have charity; have patience; have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak--above all, any little child--to shame and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste--never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer--crush what is finest and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature.

  Charles Kingsley

  Crush, Children, Selfish

  Charles Kingsley (2008). “Daily Thoughts (EasyRead Super Large 18pt Edition)”, p.253, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• This modernizing experiment seems to have something diabolic about it. Everything that was becomes rejected in the name of a modernity that assumes the nature of a fiction, an illusion, a devilish apparition. To a greater or lesser extent this applies to all the postcommunist countries.

  Andrzej Stasiuk

  Country, Names, Fiction

  Andrzej Stasiuk (2009). “Fado”

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• It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.

  E. M. Forster

  Character, Society, Difficult

  4 Copy quote

• All things from the north are devilish.

  Philip Pullman

  All Things

  Philip Pullman (2007). “The Amber Spyglass”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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