If not reason, then the devil.

The devil take the hindmost!

It is for your own good to love a dare-devil rather than a holy coward. A dare-devil is a unique devil, battling your fears, your pains, conquering your uncertainties, carrying you his arms, and flying out of the corrosive fire. The coward is a trickster serpent, which vanishes in your time of despair, and appears in time of equanimity.

"One of these traders brought in some newspapers and translated them for the Oglalas, reading aloud a report that called the Oglalas "bloodthirsty savages" and "murdering hounds of hell." The word "hell" confused Crazy Horse. What was hell? The trader tried to explain but only confused Crazy Horse more- how could a great power do a bad thing like sending souls to hell?"

The Devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies.

I am the Devil, and don't you forget it.

“The Devil” is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes. This has led to so much confusion of thought that THE BEAST 666 has preferred to let names stand as they are, and to proclaim simply that AIWAZ, the solar-phallic-hermetic “Lucifer,” is His own Holy Guardian Angel, and “The Devil” SATAN or HADIT, the Supreme Soul behind RA-HOOR-KHUIT the Sun, the Lord of our particular unit of the Starry Universe. This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade “Know Thyself!” and taught Initiation. He is “the Devil” of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection.

"There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn't just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They'd come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout "The Devil Made Me Do It" and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to. That was what some humans found hard to understand. Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more than Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind."

In Black Magic, the Devil means the employment of the Grand Magical Agent for a wicked purpose by a perverted Will.

The devil tells the best stories.

Journalist: Does the devil exist? Arturo Sosa: In several ways. You have to understand the cultural elements to refer to this character. In the language of Saint Ignatius it is the evil spirit that leads you to do things that go against the spirit of God. It exists as evil personified in different structures but not in people, because it is not a person, it is a way of carrying out evil. He is not a person like a human person is. It is a way of evil being present in human life. Good and evil are in constant struggle in human consciousness, and we have ways of indicating them. We recognize God as good, entirely good. Symbols are part of reality, and the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality.

Readers are advised to remember the devil is a liar.

BROADBENT [stiffly]. Devil is rather a strong expression in that
connexion, Mr Keegan.

KEEGAN. Not from a man who knows that this world is hell. But
since the word offends you, let me soften it, and compare you
simply to an ass. [Larry whitens with anger].

BROADBENT [reddening]. An ass!

KEEGAN [gently]. You may take it without offence from a madman
who calls the ass his brother — and a very honest, useful and
faithful brother too. The ass, sir, is the most efficient of
beasts, matter-of-fact, hardy, friendly when you treat him as a
fellow-creature, stubborn when you abuse him, ridiculous only in
love, which sets him braying, and in politics, which move him to
roll about in the public road and raise a dust about nothing. Can
you deny these qualities and habits in yourself, sir?

BROADBENT [goodhumoredly]. Well, yes, I'm afraid I do, you know.

KEEGAN. Then perhaps you will confess to the ass's one fault.

BROADBENT. Perhaps so: what is it?

KEEGAN. That he wastes all his virtues — his efficiency, as you
call it — in doing the will of his greedy masters instead of doing
the will of Heaven that is in himself. He is efficient in the
service of Mammon, mighty in mischief, skilful in ruin, heroic in
destruction. But he comes to browse here without knowing that the
soil his hoof touches is holy ground. Ireland, sir, for good or
evil, is like no other place under heaven; and no man can touch
its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse. It
produces two kinds of men in strange perfection: saints and
traitors. It is called the island of the saints; but indeed in
these later years it might be more fitly called the island of the
traitors; for our harvest of these is the fine flower of the
world's crop of infamy. But the day may come when these islands
shall live by the quality of their men rather than by the
abundance of their minerals; and then we shall see.

LARRY. Mr Keegan: if you are going to be sentimental about
Ireland, I shall bid you good evening. We

The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.