Better the devil you know - This is the shortened form of the full idiom, 'better the devil you know than the devil you don't', and means that it is often better to deal with someone or something you are familiar with and know, even if they are not ideal, than take a risk with an unknown person or thing.
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Between the devil and the deep blue sea - If you are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, you are in a dilemma; a difficult choice.
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Devil finds work for idle hands - When people say that the devil finds work for idle hands, they mean that if people don't have anything to do with their time, they are more likely to get involved in trouble and criminality.
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Devil is in the detail - When people say that the devil in the detail, they mean that small things in plans and schemes that are often overlooked can cause serious problems later on.
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Devil may care - If you live a devil-may-care life it means you are willing to take more risks than most people.
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Devil's advocate - If someone plays Devil's advocate in an argument, they adopt a position they don't believe in just for the sake of the argument
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Idle hands are the devil's handiwork - When someone is not busy, or being productive, trouble is bound to follow.
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If you lie down with the Devil, you will wake up in hell - This means that if you become involved with bad company, there will be negative consequences.
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Let the devil take the hindmost - This idiom means that you should think of yourself and not be concerned about other people; look after yourself and let the devil take the hindmost.
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Speak of the devil! - If you are talking about someone and they happen to walk in, you can use this idiom as a way of letting them know you were talking about them.
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In literature:
Did not Simon the magician rise into the air by means of the devil?
"The Phantom World" by Augustin Calmet
After that Belle drove the "he-devils" and others quite as devilish, and risked her bones with perfect equanimity.
"Rim o' the World" by B. M. Bower
The devil with the rifle got a line on me down the hill a short time ago.
"The Spoilers of the Valley" by Robert Watson
Say, it's a devil's region, an' everything to it belongs to the devil.
"The Golden Woman" by Ridgwell Cullum
And so the old man had ridden as though the devil were after him.
"Dwellers in the Hills" by Melville Davisson Post
I thought none but the Devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution.
"Bunyan" by James Anthony Froude
Here's to the devil, because there's no God and the devil reigns.
"The One-Way Trail" by Ridgwell Cullum
Damn it, I actually feel sorry for the poor devils it bursts on!
"Astounding Stories, February, 1931" by Various
The only devil in this story is the devil of fearful ignorance and misbelief in Brother Martin.
"Flowers of Freethought" by George W. Foote
They believed that animals were often taken possession of by devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy the devil.
"The Ghosts" by Robert G. Ingersoll
According to the Christian scheme, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve from their allegiance to God in the form of a serpent.
"Bible Romances" by George W. Foote
The boy had fallen an innocent victim to the devil's wiles.
"Carmen Ariza" by Charles Francis Stocking
The answer is found in the fact that the devil had filled Cain's heart with pride and vanity over his birthright.
"Epistle Sermons, Vol. III" by Martin Luther
The lurking devil seemed to slink away from him.
"In the Heart of a Fool" by William Allen White
What the devil brings you here?
"The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV" by Robert Louis Stevenson
My Jack was full of the devil of corn and too much grass, and no work.
"The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25)" by Robert Louis Stevenson
I know very well that you're a little devil, but I don't for a moment think you'll put any dirt into my plate.
"Absolution" by Clara Viebig
Only now and again to shame the Devil, as the sayin' is.
"When Ghost Meets Ghost" by William Frend De Morgan
The devil has instigated him to cross our path; he shall have the devil's comfort for it.
"Horse-Shoe Robinson" by John Pendleton Kennedy
When the Underdog returned there followed at his heels a handsome Devil.
"The Book of Gud" by Dan Spain
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In poetry:
One month in the slums,
And I am sad,
So sad
I seem devil-possessed,
Or mad.
"Shinkawa" by Toyohiko Kagawa
Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend
their own ways, but each others.
"Mankind" by Piet Hein
Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,
Being mixed therein
Since first the devil threw dice with God
For you, Faustine.
"Faustine" by Algernon Charles Swinburne
That night the whole world mingled,
The souls were babes at play,
And angel danced with devil.
And God cried, 'Holiday!'
"A Certain Evening" by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
She wrote of Mercy: 'She was loth
Too hard to goad a foe.'
He stamped, as when men drive an oath
Devils transcribe below.
"Archduchess Anne" by George Meredith
For lo, as if the taint of hell
Were in the moorland calm,
There rises up with shout and oath
The devil's godless psalm—
"Cameron's Stone" by Alexander Anderson
In news:
Even when they play well, the bounces go against the Devils.
Indiana Jones comes to Blu-ray in full, two classics of poetic realism, Keanu Reeves in the employ of the Devil, and more.
I have stood to be corrected lately when I said the devil is on the loose.
What I have come to see is the devil has been on the loose.
Mudslinging for fun at 'Dirty Devil Dog Mud Run'.
More than 500 mud-runners took part in Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany "Dirty Devil Dog Run" Saturday.
MCLB to host 'Dirty Devil Dog Mud Run.
The general public is invited to Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany for its first "Dirty Devil Dog Mud Run," set for 10 am on Nov 17 at the base's Boyett Park.
From left, Blue Devils coach Ed Honabarger joins seniors Josh Bratton, Bryce Staats and Jamarcus Hershberger after they apply Domestic Violence Awareness stickers to their helmets.
DEVIL DOG Click to enlarge.
The weather looks to be perfect for the 19th annual Devil Dog Run, scheduled for Saturday, September 15 at the New Post chapel.
Devil May Care 's owner believes there may be magic in her gate position.
Popular local playwright Scott Phillips has written his sixth production, " Devil May Care ," and it will debut at the Kent Theatre in Cedar Springs next weekend.
Devil May Care Loses Battle With Cancer.
Devil May Care Takes Mother Goose.
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In science:
Non-smooth structures open a Pandora box of very strange objects like the Devil’s staircase .
LHC card games: bringing about retrocausality?
Devil’s staircase implies a possibility for a particle to advance forward with a continuous constant velocity which is zero nearly everywhere! Nevertheless, such Cantor functions are not merely pathological oddities as they appear naturally in various areas of mathematics and mathematical physics.
LHC card games: bringing about retrocausality?
Available: the day: The devil lurks in the details. [Online].
Storage Size Determination for Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Systems
After we choose the center Pi ∈ Ci ⊂ Sing(Ri ) ⊂ Wi πi+1←− Wi+1 to extend the resolution sequence, the and take the transformation Wi “devil” chooses a closed point Pi+1 ∈ π−1 (Pi ) ⊂ Wi .
Resolution of singularities of an idealistic filtration in dimension 3 after Benito-Villamayor
Note that in the classical limit of zero hopping the long-range model exhibits a devil’s staircase (see Refs. [168, 169] for 1D) of various solid phases.
Recent developments in Quantum Monte-Carlo simulations with applications for cold gases
The single-particle spectrum becomes a Cantor set (the bands acquire zero measure), and the gaps form a devil’s staircase .
Quenches in a quasi-disordered integrable lattice system: Dynamics and statistical description of observables after relaxation
As it often happens, however, the devil was in the details.
Reflections and Impressionistic Portrait at the Conference "Frontiers Beyond the Standard Model," FTPI, Oct. 2012
Parlitz U. & Lauterborn W. 1987 Period-doubling cascades and devil’s staircases of the driven van der Pol oscillator.
A New Test for Chaos
In this paper we give non-trivial applications of the thermodynamic formalism to the theory of distribution functions of Gibbs measures (devil’s staircases) supported on limit sets of finitely generated conformal iterated function systems in R .
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
For potentials of this type, we consider the set Λα ψ of points at which the α -Hölder derivative of the distribution function Fψ of νψ does not exist in the generalized sense (note, Fψ is an ‘ordinary devil’s staircase’).
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
Iterated function systems, thermodynamic formalism, multifractal formalism, Lyapunov spectra, Gibbs measures, devil’s staircases, non-Hölder-differentiability, distribution functions.
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
Let us also remark that the results in this paper can be expressed in terms of so called ‘ordinary devil’s staircases’ as follows.
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
Note that these results are in slight contrast to our results for a certain slippery devil’s staircase in [KS07].
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
For a slippery devil’s staircase we have that although the underlying measure is still singular with respect to λ , the support of the measure is equal to an interval.
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
As was shown in [KS07], the measure of maximal entropy mU for the Farey map U has a distribution function which is a slippery devil’s staircase.
H\"older-differentiability of Gibbs distribution functions
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