87 Devilish Quotes For Inspiration

Inspiration can often come from the least expected places, including the mischievous and enigmatic realm of the devilish. While typically associated with mischief and chaos, devilish quotes possess a unique allure that captivates the imagination and provokes thought. They challenge norms, ignite a rebellious spirit, and often reveal deeper truths cloaked in wit and daring. Whether you're looking to spark your creativity, push boundaries, or simply ponder the complexities of human nature, our carefully curated selection of 87 devilish quotes will dare you to see the world from a different perspective and inspire a newfound appreciation for the shades of grey in life.

1. “La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")” - Charles Baudelaire

2. “All the cunning of the devil is exercised in trying to tear us away from the word.” - Martin Luther

3. “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” - Martin Luther

4. “The devil...the prowde spirite...cannot endure to be mocked.” - Thomas Moore

5. “I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.” - Flannery O'Connor

6. “There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.” - Flannery O'Connor

7. “My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

8. “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” - Martin Luther

9. “...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

10. “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” - Oscar Wilde

11. “But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country.” - James Robertson

12. “The Devil teaches women what they are – or they would teach it to the Devil if he did not know.” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

13. “Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.” - Joris-Karl Huysmans

14. “Next I prayed to Allah, whose ears are deaf; then did I beseech his fallen twin, the Devil Hornprick, who sits upon his thorn of fire, gloating upon his constellations and counting his bloody seeds. In Baclava it is said Hornprick once caught a glimpse of the First Woman, as she sat singing to her snake in her chamber of sacred mud. Dazzled by her sight, the light of love and lust, he fell. He is still falling. For all eternity her breasts orbit his dreams.” - Rikki Ducornet

15. “There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings” - Alfred De Musset

16. “He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height” - Gustave Flaubert

17. “If there was a God. I would spit in his face for subjecting me to this. If there was a Devil, I would sell my sould to make it end. If there was something Higher that controlled out f***ing fates, I would tell it to take my fate and shove it up its fucking ass. Shove it hard and far, you motherf***er. Please end. Please end. Please end.” - james frey

18. “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.” - Jack Heath

19. “In his youth, he was electrified. The stars were moving in his bloodstream. He would not have been cowed by the customs of an earthly monarch. When he loved, it was with a heat and a desperation that he carried like a sword. He loved in the way that Greeks burned cities.” - Brenna Yovanoff

20. “God saves - but not now, and not here. His salvation is on layaway. Like all grifters, He asks you to pay now and take it on faith that you will receive later. Whereas women offer a different sort of salvation, more immediate and fulfilling. They don't put off their love for a distant, ill-defined eternity but make a gift of it in the here and now, frequently to those who deserve it least. So it was in my case. So it is for many. The devil and woman have been allies against God from the beginning...” - Joe Hill

21. “For as from the same piece of clay a potter may fashion either a pot or a tile, so the Devil may shape a witch into a wolf or a cat or even a goat, without subtracting from her and without adding to her at all. For this occurs just as clay is first molded into one, then shaped into another form, for the Devil is a potter and his witches are but clay.” - Aino Kallas

22. “Don’t be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn’t allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you.” - Steve Maraboli

23. “A woman being never at a loss... the devil always sticks by them.” - George Gordon Byron

24. “For, he (The Devil) observed, the issue of the great battle of Good and Evil had been otherwise settled, as he would presently show him. "It wants but a few moments of night," he continued, "and over this interval of twilight, as you know, I have been given complete control. Look to the West.("The Legend of Monte Del Diablo")” - Bret Harte

25. “Pelos ossos de Deus, Tom, o diabo fez um serviço ruim quando trepou com sua mãe.” - Bernard Cornwell

26. “Logic is what the devil likes most.” - Kelly Braffet

27. “Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.” - Holly Black

28. “Who but the sports-mad [Norman] Mailer would liken the battle between God and the Devil to a game of American football? The contest, for sure, has with [sic] own laws (so that after God and the Devil 'tackle a guy, they don't kick him in the head'), but each side is not above cheating—with God breaking the rules occasionally by throwing in 'a miracle'. Strangely, Mailer doesn’t mention Jesus in this agonising analogy, but then the notion of the 'super-sub' may be an image too far even for him.” - Christopher Hitchens

29. “The Devil has all the best tunes? My arse! Metalville just got a new sheriff.” - Mark Rice

30. “When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.” - Christopher Hitchens

31. “The devil himself can become beauty, so we are told, to corrupt mankind."(Marco)” - Iain Pears

32. “God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.” - Thomas Deloney

33. “You never walk alone. Even the devil is the lord of flies.” - Gilles Deleuze

34. “To the Sabbath! To the Sabbath!' they cried. 'On to the Witches' Sabbath!" Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went out, and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.” - Algernon Blackwood

35. “Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...” - John Milton

36. “I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!” - Steve Maraboli

37. “Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil.” - Douglas Wilson

38. “The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?” - Arthur Conan Doyle

39. “Psychic change, as Todorov has recognized, subverted the genre in another way, by revoking the cultural taboos, the social censorship, that had prohibited the overt treatment of psychosexual themes, which then found covert expression in the supernatural tale. 'There is no need today to resort to the devil [or to posthumous reverie] in order to speak of excessive sexual desire, and none to resort to vampires in order to designate the attraction exerted by corpses: psychoanalysis, and the literature which is directly or indirectly inspired by it, deal with these matters in undisguised terms. The themes of fantastic literature have become, literally, the very themes of the psychological investigations of the last fifty years.” - Howard Kerr

40. “Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.” - Franz Rottensteiner

41. “Not entirely fair?" His voice became that of the inferno: a rushing, booming howl of icy evil that flew around the great cavern, as swift and cold as the Wendigo on skates. "I am Satan, also called Lucifer the Light Bearer..."Cabal winced. What was it about devils that they always had to give you their whole family history?"I was cast down from the presence of God himself into this dark, sulfurous pit and condemned to spend eternity here-""Have you tried saying sorry?" interrupted Cabal."No, I haven't! I was sent down for a sin of pride. It rather undermines my position if I say 'sorry'!” - Jonathan L. Howard

42. “Elaine: He saved my life twice. He's the only grown-up I know who keeps his promises.Michael: Yes. It is a point of pride with him. But please — don't mistake it for a virtue.” - Mike Carey

43. “... you cannot shake hands with the Devil and not get sulphur on your sleeve.” - Nancy A. Collins

44. “In every person, there is a doer and a devil. With every passing days, the doer dies and a devil has to rise.” - Santosh Kalwar

45. “The devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.” - Santa Teresa de Jesús

46. “Boy, you knock on the devil's door and he will head slam you through the wall.” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

47. “He did not see any reason why the devil should have all the good tunes.” - Rowland Hill

48. “The truth is, the Devil's job is easy.” - Tyler Edwards

49. “Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood.” - Stevie Smith

50. “If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead.” - Jess C. Scott

51. “Are you a devil?""I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart.” - Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)

52. “Please, baby, you had to know the Devil would be well endowed.” - Debra Anastasia

53. “That wasn’t blood. It was love. It pours out of you when you lose faith.” - Debra Anastasia

54. “For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person. (on Margaret Thatcher)” - Frankie Boyle

55. “The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?” - Umberto Eco

56. “We don't know the Devil's side of the story, because God wrote all the books.” - J.A. Konrath

57. “If you find yourself about to complain, think of your many blessings and rejoice! Don't give the devil a ride today, because then he'll want to drive full-time. So, kick his attitude of complaining spirit out of your blessed zone. Don't give the devil NOTHING!!” - Anita R. Sneed-Carter

58. “Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph.” - Robert E. Howard

59. “Conviction says, 'My behavior was wrong.' Satan, on the other hand, floods our hearts with shame. Shame says, 'There is something wrong with me.” - Dale Forehand

60. “This life is for loving, sharing, learning, smiling, caring, forgiving, laughing, hugging, helping, dancing, wondering, healing, and even more loving. I choose to live life this way. I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, 'aw shit, he's up!” - Steve Maraboli

61. “When devils will the blackest sins put onThey do suggest at first with heavenly shows” - William Shakespeare

62. “Schwester Marie–Claire hatte in ihrem Ethikunterricht stets behauptet, es käme gar nicht darauf an, dass die Menschen an den Teufel glaubten, denn es reiche schon aus, dass der Teufel gute Gründe hätte an die Menschen zu glauben, um sicherstellen zu können, dass das Böse in der Welt weiterhin über das Gute triumphierte.” - Emilia Polo

63. “Do you think the Devil is real then?” she asked. If God wasn’t up in heaven answering a desperate mother’s prayers then maybe Satan didn’t exist either.“He is real,” Gabriel answered quietly, his voice almost a whisper. “I look him in the eye every day.” - Evangeline Ravencraft

64. “You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.” - Charles Dickens

65. “We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must havethe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthlessfurnace of this world. To make injustice the onlymeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil.” - Jack Gilbert

66. “In fact, the Devil is delighted when we spend our time and energy defending the Bible, as long as we do not get around to actually reading the Bible.” - R.C. Sproul Jr.

67. “Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image” - Dean Koontz

68. “There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.” - Dean Koontz

69. “Increase Mather, President of Harvard University, in his treatise on Remarkable Providences, insists that the smell of herbs alarms the Devil and that medicine expels him. Such beliefs have probably even now not wholly disappeared from among us.” - James Henry Breasted

70. “I am trying now to be entirely honest. I did actually comfort in the thought that the Devil had, on Strawless Common, defeated God. I much preferred that thought to the thought that God hadn't cared, hadn't helped Robin. I thought all the way back to the story of Eden. God, all-loving, all-wise, had surely wanted people to be happy and healthy and good; it was the Devil who spoiled it all...and since so many people were miserable and sickly and bad the Devil must indeed by very powerful. The lifeless, voiceless thing, lately a singing boy, which they had cut down and put under a sack in the barn to await an unhallowed cross-road grave seemed to me to prove the power of the Devil."Lady Alice Rowhedge” - Norah Lofts

71. “I'm a Cynster--I've been raised to acquire, defend, and protect. My family is the core of my existence--without a family, without children, I'd have nothing to protect, no reason to acquire.” - Stephanie Laurens

72. “Why don’t I have a cool name like that. Instead of Lucifer and Beelzebub. I mean, seriously, Beelzebub? It sounds like the name of a brothel or a low life bar. Why can’t I be Lu Von Cipher? Sounds good, right?” - Cameron Jace

73. “Devil and God – two sides of the same face.” - Dejan Stojanovic

74. “If the devil ever raised a garden, the Everglades was it.” - James Carlos Blake

75. “I want to believe there's a God. Because I sure as hell know there's a devil.” - Jodi Picoult

76. “Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (...)‘And?’‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust.” - Paul Hoffman

77. “I never have sympathy for those that have been blinded by the path of God. You chose to walk into the light, not realizing that you were already chained within the darkness. When a hand was offered to you, you looked up into the sky, and bowed your head in blind obedience, when you should have been creating a new possibility. Nothing is more pathetic than to see ignorance in action. Nothing is more laughable than to see the obedient ask an illusion for more power to stay frivolously obedient. I never have sympathy for those that have been blinded by the path of God. I only have sympathy for the Devil...” - Lionel Suggs

78. “Considering the notion that the spiritual battlefield is infinitely greater than the physical, perhaps God is more willing to bless with a sort of divine ecstasy those who see the devil as the enemy rather than those who see other people as the enemies.” - Criss Jami

79. “Blake said Milton was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. I am of the Devil's party and know it.” - Philip Pullman

80. “Now,' cried the fiend, 'follow me! You must understand that I cannot get out by the great gate - the porter will not suffer that. Once here, there is no retreat. Follow me, therefore: we will just go to your house, where you shall dress yourself; for you can hardly go to a ball in your present costume - especially as it is not a bal masque. Mind and wrap yourself well up in your winding-sheet, for the nights are cold, and you may feel unpleasantly touched by it.'As he said this, Satan laughed malignantly; and I continued silently to walk after him.'I am sure,' continued he, 'that, in spite of the service I am doing you, you do not yet like me. You are always thus, you men - ungrateful to your friends. Not that I blame ingratitude; it is a vice upon which I pride myself, since I invented it myself; and I must say, that it is one most in vogue. But I do wish to see you a little more merry - it is the only thing I ask of you.' I answered not, but still followed my guide, white as a statue, and as cold. I was silent; but, at the pauses in the fiend's voice, I could hear my teeth chatter against each other, and my bones rattle in my body. ("The Dead Man's Story")” - Hain Friswell

81. “you can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.''My pet, I've been to the Devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, not even for you.” - Margaret Mitchell

82. “You might want to have Kate close her eyes if you ever want her to sleep with you, asshole. Because once I take off my pants, you’ll always come second.” - Debra Anastasia

83. “A greedy man is born to cavort with the devil.” - Lybian proverb

84. “A pair of workman’s brogans encased my feet, and for trousers I was furnished with a pair of pale blue, washed-out overalls, one leg of which was fully ten inches shorter than the other. The abbreviated leg looked as though the devil had there clutched for the Cockney’s soul and missed the shadow for the substance.” - Jack London

85. “What you inherit from your fathermust first be earned before it's yours.” - Goethe

86. “Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.” - Goethe

87. “What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!” And that one, imagine, smiles and says: “Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And—bang!” - Mikhail Bulgakov