A garland of quotations XLII

Culled from the finest tanar'ri in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday

Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon.
•Dave Sim, Cerebus #65 (1984).

Blood for a blow is interest indeed.
Methinks I am grown taller with the murder,
And, standing straight on this majestic pile,
I hit the clouds, and see the world below me!
Oh, ’tis the worst of racks to a brave spirit,
To be born base, a vassal, a cursed slave.
Now, by the project labouring in my brain,
’Tis nobler far to be a king in hell,
To head infernal legions, chiefs below,
To let them loose for earth, to call them in,
And take account of what dark deeds are done,
Than be a subject-god in heaven, unblest,
And, without mischief, have eternal rest!
•Nathaniel Lee, The Rival Queens (1677).

How come you haven’t mentioned how frightening I am, and at the same time sort of fascinating?
•Daniel Pinkwater, Devil in the Drain (1984).

I have not been thy dupe nor am thy prey,
But was my own destroyer, and will be
My own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!
The hand of death is on me—but not yours!
•Byron, Manfred (1817).

Did not the devil appear to Martin
Luther in Germany for certain,
And would have gulled him with a trick
But Mart. was too, too politick?
•Samuel Butler, Hudibras III (1678).

We will not change our Credo
For Pope, nor boke, nor bell;
And yf the Devil come himself
We’ll hounde him back to hell.
•John Still, “The Spanish Armada” (1588).

We have enough problems without inventing demons to test us.
•Mike Baron, Nexus #68 (1990).

This angered Faustus, for he meant to have himself the only cook in the devil’s banquet.
•Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserued Death of Doctor John Faustus (1592).

And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill.
•Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897).

. . .so shall the world go on,
To good malignant, to bad men benign,
Under her own weight groaning.
•Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).

Source: Still: J.C. Squire, ed., The Cambridge Book of Lesser Poets (Cambridge UP, 1927); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.