We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Painted Devils. Here they are! All 100 of them:
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The devil is not as black as he is painted.
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Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
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wash the brush, just beats the devil out of it
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Bob Ross (The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, Vol. 29)
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I’m going to paint too. I’m going to paint pictures of ghosts and devils and horses out of hell.
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Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
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Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures: ‘tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil
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William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
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When you live entirely among madmen, it is difficult to know how sane you are.
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Robert Aickman (Painted Devils: Strange Stories)
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There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are-the quicker to take fright-the more violent they pray that every storm will be … Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms-they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils.
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Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
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Haven, don't ask me to define the boundaries of normal. You know how I was raised. My father once struck strands of his own pubic hair onto a painting and sold it for a million dollars.
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Lisa Kleypas (Blue-Eyed Devil (Travises, #2))
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Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear.
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H.P. Lovecraft
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the devil is not so black as he is painted.
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George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)
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Maybe there was just the Devil, the real God of this lousy world.
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Janet Fitch (Paint it Black)
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the mural, there were painted lines for the Underground, like scars stretched across the skin of the infected nation. There were wounds and then there were wounds.
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Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
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Lovers are not at their best when it matters. Mouths dry up, palms sweat, conversation flags and all the time the heart is threatening to fly from the body once and for all. Lovers have been known to have heart attacks. Lovers drink too much from nervousness and cannot perform. They eat too little and faint during their fervently wished consummation. They do not stroke the favoured cat and their face-paint comes loose. This is not all. Whatever you have set store by, your dress, your dinner, your poetry, will go wrong. How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps, but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange? Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparation. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse.
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Jeanette Winterson (The Passion)
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An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes, with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills." — Daniel Burnham talking about Frederick Law Olmstead
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Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
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Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil
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William Shakespeare
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Who can know God's intentions? Who can know Hid Mind?" She looked at the coffin, lying there like a giant question mark. Like the monolith in 2001. One big f*cking question, But at the end of the day, who need a God who'd let Michael get so lost that he'd do something like this? What was the point of a Devil if there was a God like that? Maybe there was just the Devil, the real God of this lousy world. Or maybe there was just nothing at all. And everybody was sitting around praying to a great big nothing, like people praying to airplanes, thinking they were gods. The world one big cargo cult.
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Janet Fitch (Paint it Black)
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Dr Sass…maintained that in paradise, until the time of the fall, the whole world was flat, the back-curtain of the Lord, and that it was the devil who invented a third dimension. Thus are the words ‘straight’, ‘square’, and ‘flat’ the words of noblemen, but the apple was an orb, and the sin of our first parents, the attempt at getting around God. I myself much prefer the art of painting to sculpture
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Karen Blixen
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Peter had two short swords strapped on his back, the belts crisscrossing his chest bandito style. A black splash of war paint covered his face, and his golden eyes gleamed out from the paint. He pulled his swords free, clanged them together, and all the Devils lined up on either side of him. (the Child Thief)
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Brom (The Child Thief)
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Those angels you’ve painted in your mind wouldn’t last for a moment on the streets of London, Mother,” Ellie called out to her. “We’re the devils who stepped in to replace them.
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Katherine McIntyre (Of Coppers and Cracksmen (The Whitfield Files #2))
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It was in America that horses first roamed. A million years before the birth of man, they grazed the vast plains of wiry grass and crossed to other continents over bridges of rock soon severed by retreating ice. They first knew man as the hunted knows the hunter, for long before he saw them as a means to killing other beasts, man killed them for their meat.Paintings on the walls of caves showed how. Lions and bears would turn and fight and that was the moment men speared them. But the horse was a creature of flight not fight and, with a simple deadly logic, the hunter used flight to destroy it. Whole herds were driven hurtling headlong to their deaths from the tops of cliffs. Deposits of their broken bones bore testimony. And though later he came pretending friendship, the alliance with man would ever be but fragile, for the fear he'd struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged.Since that neolithic moment when first a horse was haltered, there were those among men who understood this.They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there. Often they were seen as witches and perhaps they were. Some wrought their magic with the bleached bones of toads, plucked from moonlit streams. Others, it was said, could with but a glance root the hooves of a working team to the earth they plowed. There were gypsies and showmen, shamans and charlatans. And those who truly had the gift were wont to guard it wisely, for it was said that he who drove the devil out, might also drive him in. The owner of a horse you calmed might shake your hand then dance around the flames while they burned you in the village square.For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubles ears, these men were known as Whisperers.
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Nicholas Evans (The Horse Whisperer)
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When I became convinced that the Universe is natural – that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world -- not even in infinite space. I was free -- free to think, to express my thoughts -- free to live to my own ideal -- free to live for myself and those I loved -- free to use all my faculties, all my senses -- free to spread imagination's wings -- free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope -- free to judge and determine for myself -- free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past -- free from popes and priests -- free from all the "called" and "set apart" -- free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies -- free from the fear of eternal pain -- free from the winged monsters of the night -- free from devils, ghosts and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought -- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings -- no chains for my limbs -- no lashes for my back -- no fires for my flesh -- no master's frown or threat – no following another's steps -- no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain -- for the freedom of labor and thought -- to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains -- to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs -- to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn -- to those by fire consumed -- to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.
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Robert G. Ingersoll
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The Citizen's attic was, objectively, breathtaking. The place was littered with trunks and old clothes and wardrobes and pieces of furniture and strange metal toys no one had played with in sixty years and half-painted canvases and on and on. There were several round windows to let in the sunlight, and I loved how it raked its way across the floor as I watched, dust dancing like sugerplum fairies in the bold yellow glow. If attics could make wishes, this one would have nothing to wish for.
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April Genevieve Tucholke (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Between, #1))
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French Louis Seymour of the West Canada Creek, who knew how to survive all alone in a treacherous wilderness, and Mr. Alfred G. Vanderbilt of New York City and Raquette Lake, who was richer than God and traveled in his very own Pullman car, and Emmie Hubbard of the Uncas Road, who painted the most beautiful pictures when she was drunk and burned them in her woodstove when she was sober, were all ten times more interesting to me than Milton's devil or Austen's boy-crazy girls or that twitchy fool of Poe's who couldn't think of any place better to bury a body than under his own damn floor.
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Jennifer Donnelly (A Northern Light)
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He finished and grinned at her. “War paint,” he explained. “You’re one of us now.
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Penelope Douglas (Corrupt (Devil's Night, #1))
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Watching her sleeping form, I feel so many things. With a hand tucked beneath her chin, she looks like cotton candy wouldn’t melt in her angelic mouth. Whereas I know she’s the devil’s apprentice, expelled out of Hell to torture mortal men under her heel. Hell will be raised when she wakes, that much I know. I might even want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted. To see her react. She’ll paint me as the bad guy in this situation. Huh, maybe I am. Did I try to stop what we did? Not even once. I went full steam ahead with hardly any provocation.
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V. Theia (Manhattan Muse (From Manhattan #8))
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There aren't many kids today as good as you are. Kids today are selfish; they don't think of others. They're too busy listening to devil music on their eight-track players to think of anyone else.
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K. Martin Beckner (Chips of Red Paint)
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And do you find me monstrous?” She could have lied, but he’d see right through it. He didn’t come across as the sort you could sneak a falsehood past. “‘The devil is not as black as he is painted.
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Melissa Grey (The Girl at Midnight (The Girl at Midnight, #1))
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Every time a writer sits down and makes up stories, he touches the veil. Every time an artist slaps paint onto a canvas, she touches the veil. And every time someone reads an author’s books, they touch the veil.
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S.A. Hunt (Ten Thousand Devils (The Outlaw King #3))
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There was no God, no Holy Trinity, no devils, ghosts, or ghouls rising from graves; there was no Death flying everywhere in search of new sinners to snare. These were all tales for ignorant people who did not understand the natural order of the world, did not believe in their own powers, and therefore had to take refuge in their belief in some God.
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Jerzy Kosiński (The Painted Bird)
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When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models.One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face.Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural.After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches.The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features.When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said: 'I've seen that picture before!''When?' asked an astonished Leonardo.'Three years ago, before I lost everything I had, at a time when I used to sing in a choir and my life was full of dreams. The artist asked me to pose as the model for the face of Jesus.
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Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
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A poisonous pill is never a whit the less poisonous because it is gilded over with gold; nor a wolf is never a whit the less a wolf because he has put on a sheep's skin; nor the devil is never a whit the less a devil because he appears sometimes like an angel of light. So neither is sin any whit the less filthy and abominable by its being painted over with virtue's colors.
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Thomas Brooks (Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices)
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Dear Sir, I'll gie ye some advice,You'll tak it no uncivil:You shouldna paint at angels, man,But try and paint the Devil.To paint an angel's kittle wark,Wi' Nick there's little danger;You'll easy draw a lang-kent face,But no sae weel a stranger.
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Robert Burns (Poems and Songs)
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As he lifted his head, he saw a painting on the wall, in a carved and gilded frame. It was a luminous portrait of the duch*ess with her children when they were still young. The group was arranged on the settee, with Ivo, still an infant, on his mother's lap. Gabriel, Raphael, and Seraphina were seated on either side of her, while Phoebe leaned over the back of the settee. Her face was close to her mother's, her expression tender and slightly mischievous, as if she were about to tell her a secret or make her laugh.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels, #5))
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I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man’s mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.
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Donald Miller (Miller 3 in 1: Blue Like Jazz, Through Painted Deserts, Searching for God)
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I always dreamed of having this room in my house someday with splatters of red paint all over the walls and sheets, so I could dump drunk friends in there who would wake up in the light of day the next morning, sh*tting their pants at the massacre on the walls.The small delights in life.
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Penelope Douglas (Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3))
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It was a prank you were never really too old for. I always dreamed of having this room in my house someday with splatters of red paint all over the walls and sheets, so I could dump drunk friends in there who would wake up in the light of day the next morning, sh*tting their pants at the massacre on the walls.
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Penelope Douglas (Kill Switch (Devil's Night, #3))
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VERY FEW PEOPLE really understand the difficulties of accepting Christianity. The picture painted by the well-meaning is that after a conversion God gives the new believer a steady diet of happiness and all is immediately well. Nothing of the sort is true. On the contrary, like every other sincere person who is striving to believe in spite of having so long lived another way with a mind conditioned to cynicism, I had to go through a period of despondency, doubt, and painful self-examination.
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Louis Zamperini (Devil at My Heels)
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He put a hand to the cool, painted stones bearing witness to so many names, so many histories. In the mural, there were painted lines for the Underground, like scars stretched across the skin of the infected nation. There were wounds and then there were wounds. Some were so great Memphis had no idea how they could ever be healed.
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Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
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West’s mouth slid from hers and followed the line of her throat. Finding the throb of her pulse, he kissed and nuzzled it ardently. “You’re not a possession,” he said raggedly. “You can’t be passed from one man to another like a painting or an antique vase.” Her voice was faint. “That’s not how it is.” “Has he told you he wants you?” “Not the way you mean. He . . . he’s a gentleman . . .” “I want you with my entire body.” West dragged his mouth over hers, shaping her lips before settling in for a rough and ardent kiss. He hitched her up against him until her toes barely touched the floor. “You’re all I think about. You’re all I see. You’re the center of a star, and the force of gravity keeps pulling me closer, and I don’t give a damn that I’m about to be incinerated.” He rested his forehead against hers, panting. “That’s what he should tell you.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels #5))
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The sheer oddity of life seems to me of more and more importance, because more and more the pretense is that life is charted, predictable, and controllable.
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Robert Aickman (Painted Devils: Strange Stories)
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Do you think some places just hold on to evil? That you can't paint or wash it away? It lives on, no matter what you build on top,
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Libba Bray (Before the Devil Breaks You (The Diviners, #3))
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The devil is not as black as he is painted.” -Dante
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Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)
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You have the face of an angel too naughty for God and too ambitious for the Devil. You have a body that deserves to be painted on the ceilings of cathedrals.
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Gisell DeJesus (Shiraz)
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What was the point of the Devil if there was a God like that? Maybe there was just the Devil, the real God of this f*cking world. Or maybe there was just nothing at all.
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Janet Fitch (Paint it Black)
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ALCOHOL, n. (Arabic al kohl, a paint for the eyes.) The essential principle of all.
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Ambrose Bierce (The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary)
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They stole. They lied. They brokered peace with the devil in exchange for the souls of an innocent family. Yet you call me the monster.f*ck you. <3
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S.T. Abby (Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck, #5))
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Rot in hell, you stupid bastard. Let’s see if the devil lets you lay your hands on him, or if he shows you a taste of your own medicine.
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S.T. Abby (Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck, #5))
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We had all thought things would be quite different when we first came to France. The words Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, were painted in giant letters over the door of the building we were in.
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Lion Feuchtwanger (The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940)
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I often saw a coat of paint that you apply when you’re trying to cover up rotting wood. There were dark deeds and bad seeds, but who cared if the house was falling apart as long as it was pretty, right?
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Penelope Douglas (Corrupt (Devil's Night, #1))
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O full and splendid Moon, whom IHave, from this desk, seen climb the skySo many a midnight,—would thy glowFor the last time beheld my woe!Ever thine eye, most mournful friend,O'er books and papers saw me bend;But would that I, on mountains grand,Amid thy blessed light could stand,With spirits through mountain-caverns hover,Float in thy twilight the meadows over,And, freed from the fumes of lore that swathe me,To health in thy dewy fountains bathe me!Ah, me! this dungeon still I see.This drear, accursed masonry,Where even the welcome daylight strainsBut duskly through the painted panes.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust)
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What the devil is that?” Jack asked.Frannie eased around to see what Jack was staring at. Greystone’s back bore a painting of an unusual creature with fire coming out of its mouth and wings spread wide.
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Lorraine Heath (Surrender to the Devil (Scoundrels of St. James, #3))
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THE FAIR HAD A POWERFUL and lasting impact on the nation’s psyche, in ways both large and small. Walt Disney’s father, Elias, helped build the White City; Walt’s Magic Kingdom may well be a descendant. Certainly the fair made a powerful impression on the Disney family. It proved such a financial boon that when the family’s third son was born that year, Elias in gratitude wanted to name him Columbus. His wife, Flora, intervened; the baby became Roy. Walt came next, on December 5, 1901. The writer L. Frank Baum and his artist-partner William Wallace Denslow visited the fair; its grandeur informed their creation of Oz. The Japanese temple on the Wooded Island charmed Frank Lloyd Wright, and may have influenced the evolution of his “Prairie” residential designs. The fair prompted President Harrison to designate October 12 a national holiday, Columbus Day, which today serves to anchor a few thousand parades and a three-day weekend. Every carnival since 1893 has included a Midway and a Ferris Wheel, and every grocery store contains products born at the exposition. Shredded Wheat did survive. Every house has scores of incandescent bulbs powered by alternating current, both of which first proved themselves worthy of large-scale use at the fair; and nearly every town of any size has its little bit of ancient Rome, some beloved and be-columned bank, library or post office. Covered with graffiti, perhaps, or even an ill-conceived coat of paint, but underneath it all the glow of the White City persists. Even the Lincoln Memorial in Washington can trace its heritage to the fair.
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Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
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I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a thief, but I know color when I see it in the flash of heaven or in the Devil's opposing tricks, and I know mud. Mr. Knoedler, you needn't worry about your paintings anymore. I'm not going to steal them. I don't like them. Sincerely yours, P. Soames
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Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
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If only I could cry. I am beyond that. The light, the light, lending itself to empty downtown Saturday, but still the stupid insensate cars flush by oblivious to their stupidity, my silent plea.It isn't Mexico. It's not Paris. It's a painting by Hopper come to life. I am trapped inside a dead thing. Language is impossible here, even in English. Who has the arrogance to say: I'm mad, this is my crazy view of things, help me.I'm trapped in a silent world, a tableau of forty years ago. The walls are different, the tables, the heights of the veiling and the chairs. I loom above this letter. The view past the rows of cakes in the plate glass window is unfamiliar. I am a ghost. There is nothing now between me and death. Death is the unfamiliarity of everything, the strangeness of the once familiar. The same spatial configurations only the light is hollow, sick.I think I lack the energy to hit expensive discos which I don't know where they are to be rejected tonight. I look passable. My energy's low. I love to dance but despair is not a good muse.This Mexico, babe. Men who don't love you but act wildly as if they do initially. Self-involved, narcissistic men... The men drink and philosophize about pain. The women live it solo and culturelessly. No one cries, except easily, sentimentally. The devil, therefore God, exists.Oaxaca was a pushover compared to this. Pain had boundaries there.Spare us big cities, oh lord!
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Maryse Holder (Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holder's Letters From Mexico)
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There MacRae was, disheveled and hatless, but breathtakingly handsome. To her pleased surprise, his hair had been cut and shaped to his head in short layers of amber and gold. He had the cool, sensual allure of a lost angel painted by Cabanel.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Disguise (The Ravenels, #7))
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My sweet little killer, finally succumbing to me,” he grunts against my mouth. “You like to be owned by me? Knowing that I will kill anyone that ever tries to steal you away? You’ve signed your soul away to the Devil, baby. Can you live with that?”
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Dolores Lane (Painting with Blood (The Blood Duet))
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There was Annabelle, with her honey-streaked hair curled into shining upswept ringlets, her complexion as fresh as that of the idealized dairymaids who were painted on tins of sweets. Upon first acquaintance, Annabelle's exquisite English-rose beauty had been so intimidating that Evie had been afraid to talk to her, certain that she would receive a crushing snub from such an exquisite creature. However, she had eventually discovered that Annabelle was warm and kind, with a self-deprecating sense of humor.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
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Big and little they went on together to Molalla, to Tuska, to Roswell, Guthrie, Kaycee, to Baker and Bend. After a few weeks Pake said that if Diamond wanted a permanent traveling partner he was up for it. Diamond said yeah, although only a few states still allowed steer roping and Pake had to cover long, empty ground, his main territory in the livestock country of Oklahoma, Wyoming, Oregon and New Mexico. Their schedules did not fit into the same box without patient adjustment. But Pake knew a hundred dirt road shortcuts, steering them through scabland and slope country, in and out of the tiger sh*ts, over the tawny plain still grooved with pilgrim wagon ruts, into early darkness and the first storm laying down black ice, hard orange-dawn, the world smoking, snaking dust devils on bare dirt, heat boiling out of the sun until the paint on the truck hood curled, ragged webs of dry rain that never hit the ground, through small-town traffic and stock on the road, band of horses in morning fog, two redheaded cowboys moving a house that filled the roadway and Pake busting around and into the ditch to get past, leaving junkyards and Mexican cafes behind, turning into midnight motel entrances with RING OFFICE BELL signs or steering onto the black prairie for a stunned hour of sleep.
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Annie Proulx (Close Range: Wyoming Stories)
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Are these black cats like the hare?" "No. They're smaller; they only want me to play with them. Fly away with them to a place on the other side of the moon. There's a garden there, all silvery-gold, and the cats and hares dance and jump round and round. They can jump so much farther than they can on earth; it's like flying, and they love it so. Sometimes I've felt as if I'd like to dance and jump through the air too, they looked so happy, and I've thought maybe if I did I wouldn't be afraid any more, but when I look they're all dancing round a Figure that sits still in the middle of the garden. A big black Figure with a hood on. And It hasn't got any face. Its face is so awful that It keeps it covered. And then I get so terribly afraid. And everything stops.""And you see all that in the picture?""I don't know." She hesitated again. "I think it's partly dreams. After I've thought they were at the windows - the cats and the big hare. They sit there and watch, you see, after I've gone to sleep. But they don't come often. I don't usually know what's there."She came closer and whispered, her blue eyes earnest and weird, "I don't think it's an animal hare. I think it's Aunt Sarai's hare, that maybe it came from hell. It isn't swearing to say that word just as the name of a place, is it? That's why people used to be so scared of witches' black cats, isn't it, because they thought they weren't earth-cats, they were from the devil? Mother says there isn't any hell or any witches. But Aunt Sarai was a witch; that's why she can come back. I think they've all been witches here; the house is mad because mother wouldn't be; that's why it wants me now."Carew said, "It was all dreams, Betty. There is no hell. There is no garden on the other side of the moon. It's a dead world, full of volcanic craters, with no air for anything to grow in or breathe. A hare frightened you and, being nervous, you've had nightmares about it - pictures that fear paints on your mind just as an artist would on canvas, with paints and brushes."Every dream is now a movie we make for ourselves in our sleep...
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Evangeline Walton (Witch House)
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Lady Helen, who had been accompanied by her husband, Mr. Rhys Winterborne, was far more reserved than the twins. Instead of Pandora's raw and radiant energy, or Cassandra's effervescent charm, she possessed a quality of sweet, patient gravity. With her silver-blonde hair and willowy slenderness, Helen seemed as ethereal as a figure form from a painting by Bougereau.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Spring (The Ravenels, #3))
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As animals have no idea of the holy or the devil, they have no idea of the beautiful. The opinion held by some scientists that apes could paint, based on the 'paintings' apes had done, proved to be quite wrong. It has been confirmed that apes only imitate man. So- called 'ape art' surely does not exist. On the contrary, the cave men from Cromagnon onward knew how to paint and care. Their drawings have been found in caves of the Sahara, in Spain at Altamira, in Franc at Lascaux, and recently in Poland at Mashicka. Many of these pictures are thought to be more than 30,000 years old. Some time ago, a group of Soviet archeologists discovered a set of musical instruments, made 20,000 years ago, near the town of Chernigov in the Ukraine.
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Alija Izetbegović
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Hermes’ son, Pan, was the god of sexual desire, a force seen by the Greeks as both creative and destructive. When the Christians, strongly influenced by Augustine in the fifth century, started to condemn anything to do with sex as bad and devilish, they turned to Pan for iconographic inspiration. His horned, hairy, goat-like figure was the model for many a painting of the lusty, bestial Devil.
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Peter Stanford (The Devil: A Biography)
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How was your journey?" he asked."You don't have to make small talk with me," she said. "I don't like it, and I'm not very good at it."They paused at the shade of portico, beside a sweet-scented bower of roses. Casually Lord St. Vincent leaned a shoulder against a cream-painted column. A lazy smile curved his lips as he looked down at her. "Didn't Lady Berwick teach you?""She tried. But I hate trying to make conversation about weather. Who cares what the temperature is? I want to talk about things like... like...""Yes?" he prompted as she hesitated."Darwin. Women's suffrage. Workhouses, war, why we're alive, if you believe in séances or spirits, if music has ever made you cry, or what vegetable you hate most..." Pandora shrugged and glanced up at him, expecting the familiar frozen expression of a man who was about to run for his life. Instead she found herself caught by his arrested stare, while the silence seemed to wrap around them.After a moment, Lord St. Vincent said softly, "Carrots."Bemused, Pandora tried to gather her wits. "That's the vegetable you hate most? Do you mean cooked ones?""Any kind of carrots.""Out of all vegetables?" At his nod, she persisted, "What about carrot cake?""No."But it's cake."A smile flickered across his lips. "Still carrots."Pandora wanted to argue the superiority of carrots over some truly atrocious vegetable, such as Brussels sprouts, but heir conversation was interrupted by a silky masculine voice."Ah, there you are. I've been sent out to fetch you."Pandora shrank back as she saw a tall msn approach in a graceful stride. She knew instantly that he must be Lord Sy. Vincent's father- the resemblance was striking. His complexion was tanned and lightly time-weathered, with laugh-lines at the outer corners of his blue eyes. He had a full head of tawny-golden hair, handsomely silvered at the sides and temples. Having heard of his reputation as a former libertine, Pandora had expected an aging roué with coarse features and a leer... not this rather gorgeous specimen who wore his formidable presence like an elegant suit of clothes."My son, what can you be thinking, keeping this enchanting creature out in the heat of midday?
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Spring (The Ravenels, #3))
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Don't misunderstand, but how dare you risk your life? What the devil did you think, to leap over like that? You could have stayed safe on this side and just helped me over." Even to her ears, her tone bordered on the hysterical.Beneath her fingers, the white lawn started to redden.She sucked in a shaky breath. "How could you risk your life-your life, you idiot!" She leaned harder on the pad, dragged in another breath.He coughed weakly, shifted his head."Don't you dare die on me!"His lips twisted, but his eyes remained closed. "But if I die"-his words were a whisper-"you won't have to marry, me or anyone else. Even the most censorious in the ton will consider my death to be the end of the matter. You'll be free.""Free?" Then his earlier words registered. "If you die? I told you-don't you dare! I won't let you-I forbid you to. How can I marry you if you die? And how the hell will I live if you aren't alive, too?" As the words left her mouth, half hysterical, all emotion, she realized they were the literal truth. Her life wouldn't be worth living if he wasn't there to share it. "What will I do with my life if you die?"He softly snorted, apparently unimpressed by-or was it not registering?-her panic. "Marry some other poor sod, like you were planning to."The words cut. "You are the only poor sod I'm planning to marry." Her waspish response came on a rush of rising fear. She glanced around, but there was no one in sight. Help had yet to come running.She looked back at him, readjusted the pressure on the slowly reddening pad. "I intend not only to marry you but to lead you by the nose for the rest of your days. It's the least I can do to repay you for this-for the shock to my nerves. I'll have you know I'd decided even before this little incident to reverse my decision and become your viscountess, and lead you such a merry dance through the ballrooms and drawing rooms that you'll be gray within two years."He humphed softly, dismissively, but he was listening. Studying his face, she realized her nonsense was distracting him from the pain. She engaged her imagination and let her tongue run free. "I've decided I'll redecorate Baraclough in the French Imperial style-all that white and gilt and spindly legs, with all the chairs so delicate you won't dare sit down. And while we're on the subject of your-our-country home, I've had an idea about my carriage, the one you'll buy me as a wedding gift..."She rambled on, paying scant attention to her words, simply let them and all the images she'd dreamed of come tumbling out, painting a vibrant, fanciful, yet in many ways-all the ways that counted-accurate word pictures of her hopes, her aspirations. Her vision of their life together.When the well started to run dry, when her voice started to thicken with tears at the fear that they might no longer have a chance to enjoy all she'd described, she concluded with, "So you absolutely can't die now." Fear prodded; almost incensed, she blurted, "Not when I was about to back down and agree to return to London with you."He moistened his lips. Whispered, "You were?""Yes! I was!" His fading voice tipped her toward panic. Her voice rose in reaction. "I can't believe you were so foolish as to risk your life like this! You didn't need to put yourself in danger to save me.""Yes, I did." The words were firmer, bitten off through clenched teeth.She caught his anger. Was anger good. Would temper hold him to the world?A frown drew down his black brows. "You can't be so damned foolish as to think I wouldn't-after protecting you through all this, seeing you safely all this way, watching over you all this time, what else was I going to do?
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Stephanie Laurens (Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue (Cynster, #16; The Cynster Sisters Trilogy, #1))
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There were charming ones as well as terrible ones, that I must admit. The painter was particularly entranced by Japanese masks: warriors', actors' and courtesans' masks. Some of them were frightfully contorted, the bronze cheeks creased by a thousand wrinkles, with vermilion weeping from the corners of the eyes and long trails of green at the corners of the mouths like splenetic beards.'These are the masks of demons,' said the Englishman, caressing the long black swept-back tresses of one of them. 'The Samurai wore them in battle, to terrify the enemy. The one which is covered in green scales, with two opal pendants between the nostrils, is the mask of a sea-demon. This one, with the tufts of white fur for eyebrows and the two horsehair brushes beside the lips, is the mask of an old man. These others, of white porcelain - a material as smooth and fine as the cheeks of a Japanese maiden, and so gentle to the touch - are the masks of courtesans. See how alike they all are, with their delicate nostrils, their round faces and their heavy slanted eyelids; they are all effigies of the same goddess. The black of their wigs is rather beautiful, isn't it? Those which bubble over with laughter even in their immobility are the masks of comic actors.'That devil of a man pronounced the names of demons, gods and goddesses; his erudition cast a spell. Then: 'Bah! I have been down there too long!'Now he took up the light edifices of gauze and painted silk which were Venetian masks. 'Here is a co*ckadrill, a Captain Fracasse, a Pantaloon and a Braggadocio. Only the noses are different - and the cut of their moustaches, if you look at them closely. Doesn't the white silk mask with enormous spectacles evoke a rather comical dread? It is Doctor Curucucu, an actual marionette featured in the Tales of Hoffmann. And what about that one, with all the black horsehair and the long spatulate nose like a stork's beak tipped with a spoon? Can you imagine anything more appalling? It's a duenna's mask; amorous young women were well-guarded when they had to go about flanked by old dragons dressed up in something like that. The whole carnival of Venice is put on parade before us beneath the cape and the domino, lying in ambush behind these masks... Would you like a gondola? Where shall we go, San Marco or the Lido?
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Jean Lorrain (Monsieur De Phocas)
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I shall meditate upon normality. I shall meditate upon my little son. He does not walk. He does not speak a word. He is still swaddled in white bands. But he is pink and perfect. He smiles so frequently. I have papered his room with big roses, I have painted little hearts on everything. I do not will him to be exceptional. It is the exception that interests the devil. It is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill Or sits in the desert and hurts his mother’s heart. I will him to be common, To love me as I love him, And to marry what he wants and where he will.
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Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
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Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable flowery Earth rind.
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Thomas Carlyle (Sartor Resartus)
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Must we believe those who tell us that a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one a young girl cares to be caressed by?That is the teaching that is bawled out day by day from between those yellow covers. Do they ever pause to think, I wonder, those devil's lady-helps, what mischief they are doing crawling about God's garden, and telling childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is sweet, and that decency is ridiculous and vulgar? How many an innocent girl do they not degrade into an evil-minded woman? To how many a weak lad do they not point out the dirty by-path as the shortest cut to a maiden's heart? It is not as if they wrote of life as it really is. Speak truth, and right will take care of itself. But their pictures are coarse daubs painted from the sickly fancies of their own diseased imaginations.We want to think of women not--as their own sex would show them--as Loreleis luring us to destruction, but as good angels beckoning us upward. They have more power for good or evil than they dream of. It is just at the very age when a man's character is forming that he tumbles into love, and then the lass he loves has the making or marring of him. Unconsciously he molds himself to what she would have him, good or bad. I am sorry to have to be ungallant enough to say that I do not think they always use their influence for the best. . . .And yet, women, you could make us so much better, if you only would. It rests with you more than with all the preachers, to roll this world a little nearer heaven. Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. It is you who must wake it to noble deeds. You must be worthy of knightly worship. You must be higher than ourselves.[1886]
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Jerome K. Jerome (Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow)
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Whenever Northumberland appears Shakespeare allows him a noble, knightly demeanour and gives him language appropriate to it – indeed, he sometimes has very beautiful and even sublime passages to speak, since Shakespeare's practice is very far removed from that of Schiller, who likes to paint the Devil black and whose moral approval or disapproval of the characters he is drawing is audible in the words they themselves speak. In the case of Shakespeare, as also in that of Goethe, every character is, while he stands and speaks, entirely in the right, though he be the Devil himself.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (Essays and Aphorisms)
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I think I might be ready to go upstairs,” she said. Suddenly it was too hard to be in his presence, too painful to know that he would belong to someone else. His lips quirked into a boyish smile. “Are you saying I might finally crawl out from under this table?” “Oh, goodness!” She clapped one of her hands to her cheek in a sheepish expression. “I’m so sorry. I stopped noticing where we were sitting ages ago, I’m afraid. What a ninny you must think me.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Never a ninny, Kate. Even when I thought you the most insufferable female creature on the planet, I had no doubts about your intelligence.” Kate, who had been in the process of scooting out from under the table, paused. “I just don’t know if I should feel complimented or insulted by that statement.” “Probably both,” he admitted, “but for friendship’s sake, let’s decide upon complimented.” She turned to look at him, aware that she presented an awkward picture on her hands and knees, but the moment seemed too important to delay. “Then we are friends?” she whispered. He nodded as he stood. “Hard to believe, but I think we are.” Kate smiled as she took his helping hand and rose to her feet. “I’m glad. You’re— you’re really not the devil I’d originally thought you.” One of his brows lifted, and his face suddenly took on a very wicked expression. “Well, maybe you are,” she amended, thinking he probably was every bit the rake and rogue that society had painted him. “But maybe you’re also a rather nice person as well.” “Nice seems so bland,” he mused. “Nice,” she said emphatically, “is nice. And given what I used to think of you, you ought to be delighted by the compliment.” He laughed. “One thing about you, Kate Sheffield, is that you are never boring.” “Boring is so bland,” she quipped.-Kate & Anthony
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Julia Quinn (The Viscount Who Loved Me (Bridgertons, #2))
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My daughter lived more than six years with an incurable disease that filled her head with devils that literally hounded her to death, and she did it while laughing, painting, writing poetry, advocating and bringing joy to the people around her. She was the bravest person I have ever known, and her suicide doesn't change that. "Natalie will help our society to move forward," a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital wrote me upon learning of the suicide. "She is helping us to look at mental illness with the respect, the compassion and the dignity it deserves." I hope so. Natalie would have loved that legacy.
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Anonymous
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This was the southern sea. The colors that fade when coral is drawn out of its element were garishly bright here, intricate and lovely labyrinths on the bottom. Among the coral, fish went darting; and overhead a sea-bat, a devil-fish, flapped slow wings past, its stingaree tail trailing. Morays coiled by, opening their incredible, wolfish mouths at him, and many-limbed crabs scuttled sidewise over the rocks and little sandy plateaus of the bottom. Groves of seaweed and great fans of colored sponges swung with hypnotic motion, and schools of tiny striped fish went flashing in and out among them, moving all together as if with a single mind.Pete swam down. From a cavern among the brown and purple rocks an octopus looked at him out of huge, alien eyes. Its tentacles hung and quivered. Pete swam away, hovering over an expanse of pale sand where the light from above shimmered and ran in rippling waves, his own shadow hanging spread-eagled below him. In and out of it many little creatures went scuttling busily on their underwater errands. Life here was painted in three dimensions, and there was no gravity. There was only beauty and strangeness and a hint of terror that sent pleasurable excitement thrilling through Pete's blood.("Before I Wake")
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Henry Kuttner (Masters of Horror)
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Now let me tell you something.I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously.I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten.I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes.I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things.But—All this I did without you. This was my loss.All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever-surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.
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Gerald Durrell
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Señor Commander: you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven. Be good enough to direct me. THE STATUE. Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways of looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you really want to get there. DON JUAN. Good. [Saluting Doña Ana] Señora: your servant. ANA. But I am going with you. DON JUAN. I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; not yours [he vanishes]. ANA. How annoying! THE STATUE [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a final blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting salute. A faint echo of the, first ghostly melody comes back in acknowledgment]. Ah ! there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out through his lips] Whew ! How he does talk! Theyll never stand it in heaven. THE DEVIL [gloomily] His going is a political defeat. I cannot keep these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss I have had since that Dutch painter went: a fellow who would paint a hag of 70 with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20. THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt. THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There is something unnatural about these fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Señor Commander: it is dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human.
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George Bernard Shaw (Don Juan in Hell: From Man and Superman)
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Unclean. They were to disguise themselves as outcasts, untouchables, and so get away. She knew all about these wretched outcasts. They handled the dead and were unclean. They were supposed to be possessed by devils, and anyone coming in contact with them was also bedeviled. They were not allowed to touch food and had to eat what was thrown to them from the ground like dogs. They must enter no house and speak to neither man nor woman of the clean. They were dressed in rags and daubed from head to foot with a red paint made from stinking shark oil and red ochre mixed, red being the funereal color. If they were not insane to start with, they soon became so.
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Elizabeth Goudge (Green Dolphin Street)
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The most skilled manipulators are able to mix lies with the truth. This enables them to paint a more credible illusion as the kernels of truth embedded in the illusion gives those around them the impression that what they are saying is actually real. As a result, they may get away with their lies. However, please bear in mind that the devil is in the details. So, if you knit pick long enough, you may find that you are dealing with an impostor. That’s why it’s always a good idea to take everything you hear with a grain of salt. If you choose to take everything you hear at face value, you may become disappointed when you realize that you believed someone who was deliberately trying to fool you.
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William Cooper (Dark Psychology and Manipulation: Discover 40 Covert Emotional Manipulation Techniques, Mind Control, Brainwashing. Learn How to Analyze People, NLP Secret ... Effect, Subliminal Influence Book 1))
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You're not a possession," he said raggedly. "You can't be passed from one man to another like a painting or an antique vase."Her voice was faint. "That's not how it is.""Has he told you he wants you?""Not the way you mean. He... he's a gentleman...""I want you with my entire body." West dragged his mouth over hers, shaping her lips before settling in for a rough and ardent kiss. He hitched her up against him until her toes barely touched the floor. "You're all I think about. You're all I see. You're the center of a star, and the force of gravity keeps pulling me closer, and I don't give a damn that I'm about to be incinerated." He rested his forehead against hers, panting. "That's what he should tell you.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil's Daughter (The Ravenels, #5))
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Remember, please remember, you do not (you must not!) fear, attack, or hate the False Self. That would only continue a negative and arrogant death energy, and it is delusional and counterproductive anyway. It would be trying to “drive out the devil by the prince of devils,” as Jesus puts it. In the great economy of grace, all is used and transformed, and nothing is wasted. God uses your various False Selves to lead you beyond them. Note that Jesus' clear message to his beloved, Mary Magdalene, is not that she squelch, deny, or destroy her human love for him. He is much more subtle than that. He just says to her, “Do not cling to me” (John 20:17). He is saying, “Don't hold on to your needy False Self. We are all heading for something much bigger and much better, Mary.” This is the spiritual art of detachment, which is not taught much in capitalistic worldview where clinging and possessing are not just the norm but even the goal. You see how trapped we are. Great love is both very attached (“passionate”) and yet very detached at the same time. It is love but not addiction. The soul, the True Self, has everything, and so it does not require any particular thing. When you have all things, you do not have to protect any one thing. True Self can love and let go. The False Self cannot do this. The “do not cling to me” encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is the most painted Easter scene, I am told. The artistic imagination knew that a seeming contradiction was playing out here: intense love and yet appropriate distance. The soul and the spirit tend to love and revel in paradoxes; they operate by resonance and reflection. The ego (False Self) wants to resolve all paradoxes in a most glib way and thinks that it can. It operates in a way that is mechanical and instrumental. This is not always bad, but it is surely limited. The ego would like Mary Magdalene and Jesus to be caught up in a passionate love affair. Of course they are, in the deepest sense of the term, but only the True Self knows how to enjoy and picture “a love of already satisfied desire.” The True Self and False Self see differently; both are necessary, but one is better, bigger, and even eternal.
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Richard Rohr (Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self)
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Here they are. Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circ*mstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. 'Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
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A man so various, that he seem'd to beNot one, but all Mankinds Epitome.Stiff in Opinions, always in the wrong;Was every thing by starts, and nothing long:But, in the course of one revolving Moon,Was Chymist, Fidler, States-Man, and Buffoon:Then all for Women, Painting, Rhiming, Drinking;Besides ten thousand freaks that dy'd in thinking.Blest Madman, who coud every hour employ,With something New to wish, or to enjoy!Rayling and praising were his usual Theams;And both (to shew his Judgment) in Extreams:So over Violent, or over Civil,That every man, with him, was God or Devil.In squandring Wealth was his peculiar Art:Nothing went unrewarded, but Desert.Begger'd by Fools, whom still he found too late:He had his Jest, and they had his Estate.
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John Dryden (Absalom and Achitophel)
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Shirley doesn’t play fair, you see. What she wants is what a woman should want, always has and always will—big diamond engagement ring, house in a good neighborhood, furniture, children, well-made clothes, furs—but she’ll never say so. Because in our time those things are supposed to be stuffy and dull. She knows that. She reads novels. So, half believing what she says, she’ll tell you the hell with that domestic dullness, never for her. She’s going to paint, that’s what—or be a social worker, or a psychiatrist, or an interior decorator, or an actress, always an actress if she’s got any real looks—but the idea is she’s going to be somebody. Not just a wife. Perish the thought! She’s Lady Brett Ashley, with witty devil-may-care whimsey and shocking looseness all over the place.
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Herman Wouk (Marjorie Morningstar)
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There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of even more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are—the quicker to take fright—the more violent they pray that every storm will be... Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms—they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning: they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeuchi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils. These, I thought, would be my friends in the future. I was so excited I could have wept.
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Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
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There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are—the quicker to take fright—the more violent they pray that every storm will be . . . Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms—they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeichi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils. These, I thought, would be my friends in the future. I was so excited I could have wept.
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Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
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There are some people whose dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes. And the more nervous they are —the quicker to take fright—the more violent they pray that every storm will be . . . Painters who have had this mentality, after repeated wounds and intimidations at the hands of the apparitions called human beings, have often come to believe in phantasms—they plainly saw monsters in broad daylight, in the midst of nature. And they did not fob people off with clowning; they did their best to depict these monsters just as they had appeared. Takeuchi was right: they had dared to paint pictures of devils. These, I thought, would be my friends in the future. I was so excited I could have wept.
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Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
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Some People would fain have us treat this Tale of the Devil’s appearing with a Cloven-Foot with more Solemnity than I believe the Devil himself does; for Satan, who knows how much of a Cheat it is, must certainly ridicule it, in his own Thoughts, to the last Degree; but as he is glad of any Way to hoodwink the Understandings, and bubble the weak Part of the World; so if he sees Men willing to take every Scarecrow for a Devil, it is not his Business to undeceive them; on the other Hand, he finds it his Interest to foster the Cheat, and serve himself of the Consequence: Nor could I doubt but the Devil, if any Mirth be allow’d him, often laughs at the many frightful Shapes and Figures we dress him up in, and especially to see how willing we are first to paint him as black, and make him appear as ugly as we can, and then stare and start at the Spectrum of our own making.
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Daniel Defoe (The History of the Devil, as Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts)
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As I have thus suggested that the Devil himself has politically spread about this Notion[Pg 269] concerning his appearing with a Cloven-Foot, so I doubt not that he has thought it for his Purpose to paint this Cloven-Foot so lively in the Imaginations of many of our People, and especially of those clear sighted Folks who see the Devil when he is not to be seen, that they would make no Scruple to say, nay and to make Affidavit too, even before Satan himself, whenever he sat upon the Bench, that they had seen his Worship’s Foot at such and such a Time; this I advance the rather because ’tis very much for his Interest to do this, for if we had not many Witnesses, viva voce, to testify it, we should have had some obstinate Fellows always among us, who would have denied the Fact, or at least have spoken doubtfully of it, and so have rais’d Disputes and Objections against it, as impossible, or at least as improbable; buzzing one ridiculous Notion or other into our Ears, as if the Devil was not so black as he was painted, that he had no more a Cloven-Foot than a Pope, whose Apostolical Toes have so often been reverentially kiss’d by Kings and Emperors: but now alas this Part is out of the Question, not the Man in the Moon, not the Groaning-Board, not the speaking of Fryar Bacon’s Brazen-Head, not the Inspiration of Mother Shipton, or the Miracles of Dr. Faustus, Things as certain as Death and Taxes, can be more firmly believ’d: The Devil not have a Cloven-Foot! I doubt not but I could, in a short Time, bring you a thousand old Women together, that would as soon believe there was no Devil at all; nay, they will tell you, he could not be a Devil without it, any more than he could come into the Room, and the Candles not burn blue, or go out and not leave a smell of Brimstone behind him.
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Daniel Defoe (The History of the Devil, as Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts)
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Olmsted did think about it and began to see the exposition as an opportunity to achieve something for which he had fought long and hard but almost always with disappointing results. Throughout his career he had struggled, with little success, to dispel the perception that landscape architecture was simply an ambitious sort of gardening and to have his field recognized instead as a distinct branch of the fine arts, full sister to painting, sculpture, and brick-and-mortar architecture. Olmsted valued plants, trees, and flowers not for their individual attributes but rather as colors and shapes on a palette. Formal beds offended him. Roses were not roses but “flecks of white or red modifying masses of green.” It irked him that few people seemed to understand the effects he worked so long and hard to create. “I design with a view to a passage of quietly composed, soft, subdued pensive character, shape the ground, screen out discordant elements and get suitable vegetation growing.
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Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
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CHASING THE NIGHT Trouble starts when I come around Everything’s painted red when I’m in town Light me up and watch me burn it down If you’re anointing a devil, I’ll take my crown Foot on the gas, add fuel to the fire I’m already high and going higher Charging faster, ready to ignite Headed for disaster, chasing the night You turn wrong when you turn right White light at first sight Oh, you’re chasing the night But it’s a nightmare chasing you Life’s coming to me in flashes Wearing my bruises like badges Don’t know when I learned to play with matches Must want it all to end in ashes Foot on the gas, add fuel to the fire I’m already high and going higher Charging faster, ready to ignite Headed for disaster, chasing the night You turn wrong when you turn right White light at first sight Oh, you’re chasing the night But it’s a nightmare chasing you Foot on the gas, add fuel to the fire I’m already high and going higher Foot on the gas, add fuel to the fire Look me in the eye and flick the lighter Oh, you’re chasing the night But it’s a nightmare, honey, chasing you
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Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones & The Six)
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You mentioned that Palermo, the part of Buenos Aires where you were brought up, had been a violent place full of bohemians and bandits. There they had two names for the knife, ‘the blade’ and ‘the slicer’. The two names described the same object, but ‘the blade’ was the thing itself, and ‘the slicer’ described its function. ‘The blade’ could fit in the hand even of a sickly child shut up in his father’s library, ‘the blade’ could be any of the superannuated daggers and swords belonging to his warrior grandfather or great-grandfather and displayed on the walls of his house, but ‘the slicer’, the knife in the hand slicing back and forth, in and out, existed only in his imagination, in a fascinating world of rapid settlings of accounts and duels over honor, an insult or a woman, in dark street where you never went, where no writer went, except in the literature he wrote.‘I’ve always felt that in order to be a great writer, one should have the experience of life at sea, which is why Conrad and Melville and, in a way, Stevenson, who ended his days in the South Seas, were better than all of us, Vogelstein. At sea, a writer flees from the minor demons and faces only the definitive ones. A character in Conrad says that he has a horror of ports because, in port, ships rot and men go to the devil. He meant the devils of domesticity and incoherence, the small devils of terra firma. But I think that having experience of “the slicer” would give a writer the same sensation as going to sea, of spectacularly breaking the bounds of his own passivity and of his remoteness from the fundamental matters of the world.’‘You mean that if the writer were to stab someone three times, he could allege that he was merely doing so in order to improve his style.’‘Something like that. Soaking up experience and atmosphere.’‘It’s said that the artist Turner used to have himself lashed to the ship’s mast during storms at sea so that he could make sure he was getting the colours and details of his painted vortices right.’‘And it worked. But neither you nor I will ever experience “the slicer”, Vogelstein. We are condemned to “the blade”, to the knife purely as theory. Even if we used “the slicer” against someone, we would still be ourselves, watching, analyzing the scene, and, therefore, inevitably, holding “the blade” in our hand. I don’t think I could kill anyone, apart from my own characters. And I don’t think I would feel comfortable at sea either. There aren’t any libraries at sea. The sea replaces the library.
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Luis Fernando Verissimo (Borges and the Eternal Orangutans)
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The entire pre-Columbian literature of Mexico, a vast library of tens of thousands of codices, was carefully and systematically destroyed by the priests and friars who followed in the wake of the conquistadors. In November 1530, for example, Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who had shortly before been apointed 'Protector of the Indians' by the Spanish crown, proceeded to 'protect' his flock by burning at the stake a Mexican aristocrat, the lord of the city of Texcoco, whom he accused of having worshipped the rain god. In the city's marketplace Zumárraga 'had a pyramid formed of the documents of Aztec history, knowledge and literature, their paintings, manuscripts, and hieroglyphic writings, all of which he committed to the flames while the natives cried and prayed.'More than 30 years later, the holocaust of documents was still under way. In July 1562, in the main square of Mani (just south of modern Merida in the Yucatan), Bishop Diego de Landa burned thousands of Maya codices, story paintings, and hieroglyphs inscribed on rolled-up deer skins. He boasted of destroying countless 'idols' and 'altars,' all of which he described as 'works of the devil, designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity.' Noting that the Maya 'used certain characters or letters, which they wrote in their books about the antiquities and their sciences' he informs us: 'We found a great number of books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but superstitions and falsehoods of the devil we burned them all, which they took most grievously and which gave them great pain.
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Graham Hanco*ck (America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization)
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whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh from the latitudes of buckhorn handled Bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right; thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and Steelkilt—but, gentlemen, you shall hear.
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Herman Melville
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...and the handsome jester, Devil’s Gold, is shaking his bead-covered rattle, making medicine and calling us by name. We are so tired from our long walk that we cannot but admire his gilded face and his yellow magic blanket. And, holding each other’s hands like lovers, we stoop and admire ourselves in the golden pool that flickers in the great campfire he has impudently built at the crossing of two streets in Heaven.But we do not step into the pool as beforetime. Our boat is beside us, it has overtaken us like some faithful tame giant swan, and Avanel whispers: “Take us where The Golden Book was written.” And thus we are up and away. The boat carries us deeper, down the valley. We find the cell of Hunter Kelly,— . St. Scribe of the Shrines. Only his handiwork remains to testify of him. Upon the walls of his cell he has painted many an illumination he afterward painted on The Golden Book margins and, in a loose pile of old torn and unbound pages, the first draft of many a familiar text is to be found. His dried paint jars are there and his ink and on the wall hangs the empty leather sack of Johnny Appleseed, from which came the first sowing of all the Amaranths of our little city, and the Amaranth that led us here.And Avanel whispers:—“I ask my heart: —Where is Hunter Kelly, and my heart speaks to me as though commanded: ‘The Hunter is again pioneering for our little city in the little earth. He is reborn as the humblest acolyte of the Cathedral, a child that sings tonight with the star chimes, a red-cheeked boy, who shoes horses at the old forge of the Iron Gentleman. Let us also return’.”It is eight o’clock in the evening, at Fifth and Monroe. It is Saturday night, and the crowd is pouring toward The Majestic, and Chatterton’s, and The Vaudette, and The Princess and The Gaiety.It is a lovely, starry evening, in the spring. The newsboys are bawling away, and I buy an Illinois State Register. It is dated March 1, 1920.Avanel of Springfield is one hundred years away.The Register has much news of a passing nature. I am the most interested in the weather report, that tomorrow will be fair.THE END - Written in Washington Park Pavilion, Springfield, Illinois.
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Vachel Lindsay (The Golden Book of Springfield (Lost Utopias Series))
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Oh, Gray, she said. Oh, gray, indeed. As in, oh Gray what the holy hell has come over you and what the devil do you intend to do about it?He took the coward’s way out. He looked away.“I thought you were painting a portrait. Of me.”She turned her head, following his gaze to her easel. A vast seascape overflowed the small canvas. Towering thunderclouds and a violent, frothy sea. And slightly off center, a tiny ship cresting a massive wave.“I am painting you.”“What, am I on the little boat, then?” It was a relief to joke.The relief was short-lived.“No,” she said softly, turning back to look at him. “I’m on the little boat. You’re the storm. And the ocean. You’re…Gray, you’re everything.”And that was when things went from “very bad” to “worse.”“I can’t take credit for the composition. It’s inspired by a painting I once saw, in a gallery on Queen Anne Street. By a Mr. Turner.”“Turner. Yes, I know his work. No relation, I suppose?”“No.” She looked back at the canvas. “When I saw it that day, so brash and wild…I could feel the tempest churning in my blood. I just knew then and there, that I had something inside me-a passion too bold, too grand to keep squeezed inside a drawing room. First I tried to deny it, and then I tried to run from it…and then I met you, and I saw you have it, too. Don’t deny it, Gray. Don’t run from it and leave me alone.”She sat up, still rubbing his cheek with her thumb. Grasping his other hand, she drew it to her naked breast. Oh, God. She was every bit as soft as he’d dreamed. Softer. And there went his hand now. Trembling.“Touch me, Gray.” She leaned forward, until her lips paused a mere inch away from his. “Kiss me.”Perhaps that dagger had missed his heart after all, because the damned thing was hammering away inside his chest. And oh, he could taste her sweet breath mingling with his. Her lips were so close, so inviting.So dangerous.Panic-that’s what had his knees trembling and his heart hammering and his lips spouting foolishness. It had to be panic. Because something told Gray that he could see her mostly naked, and watch her toes curl as she reached her climax, and even cup her dream-soft breast in his palm-but somehow, if he touched his lips to hers, he would be lost.“Please,” she whispered. “Kiss me.
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Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
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What the devil was Davy doing up there with a marlinespike? That’s what I’d like to know. It’s a sailors duty.”She put her head in her hands. “I’m afraid that’s my fault, too. I’d been talking to him about moving up to the forecastle, and I…I think he wanted to impress me.”Gray choked on a laugh. “Well, of course he did. You ought to take care how you bat those eyelashes, sweetheart. One of these days, you’re likely to knock a man overboard.”The legs of her chair scraped the floor as she stood. The color returned to her cheeks. “If Davy was trying to impress me, it’s as much your fault as mine.”“How is that my fault?” Gray’s frustration came right back to a boil. He hated himself for growling at her, but he couldn’t seem to help it.“You’re the one who humiliated him in front of the crew, with all those questions. You goaded him into saying he…well, you know what he said.”“Yes, I know what he said.” Gray stepped toward her until only the table separated them. “I know what he said. And don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it. Don’t pretend you don’t use those men to feed your vanity.”“My vanity? What would you know about feeding my vanity? You don’t so much as breathe in my direction. At least the sailors speak to me. And if that entire ‘Kind of the Sea’ display wasn’t one long exercise in feeding your own vanity, I’m sure I don’t know what is.” She jabbed one finger on the tabletop and lowered her voice. “Those men may flirt with me, but they worship you. You know it. You wanted to feel it. Bask in it. And you did so at Davy’s expense.”“At least I only teased the boy. I’m not the one poised to break his heart.”She blinked. “It’s only infatuation. He’s not really in love with me.”He pounded the table. “Of course the boy’s in love with you! They all are. You talk to them, you listen to their stories-even Wiggins’s prattling, God only knows why. You draw them little sketches, you make them paintings for Christmas. You remind them of everything they’ve left behind, everything they pray they’ll one day hold again. And you do it all looking like some sort of Botticelli goddess, surely the most beautiful thing they’ve ever laid eyes on. Damn it, how’s a man to keep from falling in love with you?”Silence. She stared at him.She blinked.Her lips parted, and she drew a quick breath.Say something, Gray silently pleaded. Anything. But she only stared at him. What the hell had he just said? Was it truly that bad? He frowned, reliving the past minute in his mind.Oh, God. Gray rubbed his face with one hand, then gave a sharp tug on his hair. It was that bad. Damn it to hell. If Joss were here, he’d have a good laugh at his expense.
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Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
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He bent to kiss her stomach, so low that his chin brushed the triangle of curls. The tip of his tongue touched her skin, painting a delicate pattern. Her hips undulated, trying in vain to coax him lower, her entire body begging, Please down there down there. She felt as helpless as a jointed doll.Different parts of her were quivering, tensing, trembling, while her insides closed frantically on emptiness.He changed their positions with a quiet grunt of discomfort, until they were both lying on their sides, his head toward her feet. She felt him pull her top leg up and across, and then he relaxed with what sounded like a purr. As she felt him breathing between her thighs, she moaned, panted, licked her dry lips, wanting to say his name but afraid she might scream it. She tensed at the touch of his fingers, stroking lightly across the wet entrance of her body.All her consciousness focused on what he was doing, the fingertip that dipped very slightly into the pulsing cove. A teasing finger slid all the way inside and began to thrust in the slowest, gentlest rhythm possible, while her intimate muscles clenched and squeezed at the invasion, and her belly writhed. His breath rushed against the hard, tender bud of her cl*tor*s in feathery tickles. It was heaven. It was torture. She wanted to kill him. He was the meanest, wickedest man who'd ever lived, the devil himself, and she would have told him so if she'd had the breath to spare.He added another finger, and a deep glow began at her core. The feeling spread through every limb and swept upward, until it burned in her face and throat, even at the lobes of her ears. It was beneath her arms, between her toes, at the backs of her knees, a radiant heat that kept climbing. His fingers curved gently inside and held her like that, and then, finally, she felt his mouth at her sex, his tongue stroking in catlike laps. It sent her into a climax unlike anything she'd ever felt, pure ecstasy without a precise beginning or end, a long open spasm that went on and on.A new surge of wetness emerged when his fingers finally withdrew. His tongue was strong and eager as he hunted for the taste of her, making her writhe. Her head came to rest close to his groin, her cheek brushing the satiny skin of his aroused flesh. Languidly she rubbed her parted lips along the rigid length, making him jolt as if he'd received an electric shock.Encouraged by his response, she took hold of the shaft with one hand and drew her tongue along it. When she reached the tip, she fastened her lips over the silkiness and salt taste, and sucked lightly. He groaned between her thighs. With his fingers, he spread her furrow wider, and nibbled at the taut, full center, flicked at it. She moaned, vibrating around the head of his shaft.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Disguise (The Ravenels, #7))
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His soul leaped with joy to see about each neck four or five scapularies and around each waist a knotted girdle, and to behold the procession of corpses and ghosts in guingón habits. The senior sacristan made a small fortune selling—or giving away as alms, we should say—all things necessary for the salvation of the soul and the warfare against the devil, as it is well known that this spirit, which formerly had the temerity to contradict God himself face to face and to doubt His words, as is related in the holy book of Job, who carried our Lord Christ through the air as afterwards in the Dark Ages he carried the ghosts, and continues, according to report, to carry the asuang of the Philippines, now seems to have become so shamefaced that he cannot endure the sight of a piece of painted cloth and that he fears the knots on a cord.
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José Rizal (Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not).)
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Handsome as the devil,” Samantha commented, following her gaze. “Is he as wicked as they say, Lottie?” “Not in the least,” Lottie lied. “Lord Sydney is as mild-tempered and obliging a gentleman as could be found anywhere.” It was a case of unfortunate timing that at that moment, Nick happened to glance in her direction. His gaze encompassed her in a smoldering sweep that threatened to singe her clothing to ashes. Knowing what that look meant, and what would happen in the evening hours after the ball, Lottie felt a thrill deep inside, and she struggled to maintain her composure. Samantha and Arabella, meanwhile, had snapped open their fans and were employing them vigorously. “Good heavens,” Samantha exclaimed in a low voice, “the way he looks at you is positively indecent, Lottie.” “I don’t know what you mean,” Lottie said demurely, though she felt her own cheeks heating. Arabella giggled behind her own painted silk fan. “The only time I’ve ever seen that expression on my Harry’s face is when a plate of Yorkshire pudding is set before him.
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Lisa Kleypas (Worth Any Price (Bow Street Runners, #3))
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Dr. Pym,” Emma huffed, “what happened back there? What’s going on?” “I told you that we are here to see a man. What I did not say was that I have been searching for this individual for nearly a decade. Only recently did I finally track him to this village. You heard me asking the signora how to find his house.” “That’s it? That’s what made her drop the plate?” “Yes, it appears that he is regarded by the locals as something of a devil. Or perhaps the Devil. The signora was a bit flustered.” “Is he dangerous?” Michael asked. Then he added, “Because I’m the oldest now, and I’m responsible for Emma’s safety.” “Oh, please,” Emma groaned. “I wouldn’t say he’s dangerous,” the wizard said. “At least, not very.” They hiked on, following a narrow, twisting trail. They could hear goats bleating in the distance, the bells around their necks clanking dully in the still air. Stalks of dry grass scratched at the children’s ankles. The light was dying, and soon Michael could no longer see the town behind them. The trail ended at a badly maintained rock wall. Affixed to the wall was a piece of wood bearing a message scrawled in black paint. “What’s it say?” Emma asked. The wizard bent forward to translate. “It says, ‘Dear Moron’—oh my, what a beginning—‘you are about to enter private property. Trespassers will be shot, hanged, beaten with clubs, shot again; their eyeballs will be pecked out by crows, their livers roasted’—dear, this is disgusting, and it goes on for quite a while.…” He skipped to the bottom. “‘So turn around now, you blithering idiot. Sincerely, the Devil of Castel del Monte.’” Dr. Pym straightened up. “Not very inviting, is it? Well, come along.” And he climbed over the wall. Michael
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John Stephens (The Fire Chronicle (The Books of Beginning, #2))
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his abode looked like the creation of a campfire story. Its black walls stood six stories high. Scraps of worn paint peeled beneath the fingers of a sudden, foreboding wind that picked up the moment Ceony stepped foot onto the unpaved lane leading away from the main road. Three uneven turrets jutted up from the house like a devil’s crown, one of which bore a large hole in its east-facing side. A crow, or maybe a magpie, cried out from behind a broken chimney. Every window in the mansion—and Ceony counted only seven—hid behind black shutters all chained and locked, without the slightest glimmer of candlelight behind them. Dead leaves from a dozen past winters clogged the eaves and wedged themselves under bent and warped shingles—also black—and something drip-drip-dripped nearby, smelling like vinegar and sweat. The grounds themselves bore no flower gardens, no grass lawn, not even an assortment of stones. The small yard boasted only rocks and patches of uncultivated dirt too dry and cracked for even a weed to take root. The tiles composing the path up to the front door, which hung only by its top hinge, were cracked into pieces and overturned, and Ceony didn’t trust a single one of the porch’s gray, weathered boards to hold her weight long enough for her to ring the bell. “I’ve
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Charlie N. Holmberg (The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician #1))
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Red symbolizes extremes: it dresses the Pope just like it paints the Devil. The first visible color in the light spectrum, it signals passion—which is nothing more than the extremes of joy and pain.
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Nicole Collet (RED: A Love Story (RED #1))
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Honey, the devil paints the prettiest masks. Some of us learn that the hard way, but don’t blame yourself. I did that for years, and no good ever comes of it.
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Dannika Dark (Five Weeks (Seven, #3; Mageriverse #9))
