Margaret Deland Quotes

The devil always has the better tunes!

The better day, the worse deed.

Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.

So now the devil's in my soul.

So great an advantage is given to sin and Satan by your temper and disposition, that without extraordinary watchfulness, care, and diligence, they will prevail against your soul.

Be killing sin or it will be killing you.

There is no halfway or lackadaisical way to fight lust. If you're not fighting your sin, you're befriending your sin.

Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

You've got to walk and talk with God to go to heaven... I have the devil in me! If I didn't have, I'd be Christian!

I think goodness is very powerful, but often evil is made more attractive in films. It's a challenge to make goodness appealing.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

The more I had to act like a saint, the more I felt like being a sinner.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

I walked along that slippery slope where if you fail through lack of faith, you sell your soul to the devil.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

I am sure I ought not to be, but I have great reason to tremble lest Satan and my own wicked heart get the better of me. It is no easy matter to fight such enemies as these, but with Christ strengthening me, I know I shall come off more than a conquerer.

We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

We may live like saints, but when it comes to our fantasy life, everybody's got a little larceny in their soul.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

My 12th was my most Christian and most boring year of my life. Try as I did, day after day, to cling to righteousness, I was washed down in suds of sinful surroundings.

Oh, I am an angel, though sometimes I wish I was more of a devil.

We sin because we see sin as a bargain. We unconsciously calculate that it’s worth it, that it pays.

Man must choose either of the two courses, the upward or the downward; but as he has the brute in him, he will more easily choose the downward course than the upward, especially when the downward course is presented to him in a beautiful garb. Man easily capitulates when sin is presented in the garb of virtue.