Montague Summers > Quotes

“In all the darkest pages in the malign supernatural, there is no more terrible tradition than that of a vampire - a pariah even among demons”
― Montague Summers

“Throughout the shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both.”
― Montague Summers

“Ce mort-vivant a un corps qui est son propre corps. Il n'est ni mort, ni vivant mais vivant dans la mort. Il est une anomalie, un paria parmi les monstres.”
― Montague Summers

“And so in this twilight and evening of the world, when sin is flourishing on every side and in every place, when charity is growing cold, the evil of witches and their iniquities superabound”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“there are three kinds of suspicion—a light suspicion, a serious suspicion, and a grave suspicion.”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“It is a most certain and most Catholic opinion that there are sorcerers and witches who by the help of the devil, on account of a compact which they have entered into with him, are able, since God allows this, to produce real and actual evils and harm, which does not render it unlikely that they can also bring about visionary and phantastical illusions by some extraordinary and peculiar means.”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“pythons”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“an idea merely kept to oneself is not heresy unless it be afterwards put forward, obstinately and openly maintained, it should certainly be said that persons such as we have just mentioned are not to be openly condemned for the crime of heresy”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“Tell me strange things”
― Montague Summers

“mental influence over others, and in some cases such mental influence might be a good one, but it is the motive which makes it evil.”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“Femina92 from fe minus”
― Montague Summers, The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger

“Tell me strange things.”
― Montague Summers

“In England the swimming of a witch was actually the Judgement of God, the water ordeal, that might be applied for many crimes. It goes back to early days, about the sixth or seventh century, and a full description is given in the laws of Aethelstan, 924-940.”
― Montague Summers, The Discovery of Witches : a Study of Master Matthew Hopkins, Commonly Call'D Witch Finder Generall 1928 [Leather Bound]

“Some may consider these mysteries and cantrips and invocations, these sabbats and rendezvous, to have been merest mummery and pantomime, but there is no question that the psychological effect was incalculable, and harmful in the highest degree. It was, to use a modern phrase, “a war of nerves”.”
― Montague Summers