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Goul or ghul, in Arabic, signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses; hence it became the appellative of that species of monster which was supposed to haunt forests, cemeteries, and other lonely places, and believed not only to tear in pieces the living, but to dig up and devour the dead.

— Brian McNaughton Misattributed

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Source and credibility

Brian McNaughton very probably did not say this. Wikiquote lists it as misattributed.

Source: Attributed to McNaughton online, this actually is a quote from an English edition of The History of the Caliph Vathek (1786) by William Thomas Beckford, as translated by Samuel Henley.
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

More by Brian McNaughton

I believe that we are soft creatures in a world with some very hard edges. It's remarkable that we survive at all, much less do high deeds or write great music. I think … tension … is a condition of our existence, and I do my best to depict it.

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More quotes by Brian McNaughton

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They see their fellows as impediments to feeding, to be mauled and shrieked at when the mourners go home.

The Throne of Bones (1997)

For all their laughter, ghouls are a dull lot.

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I had always been impatient with superstition. If I ever met a God, I would apologize for disbelieving in Him, but not until then.

The Throne of Bones (1997)

When I was three or four, an older kid tried to scare me away from a barn full of dangerous junk by telling me the Bogeyman lived there. I spent a lot of time crawling around beneath rusted machinery and through barbed wire looking for the Bogeyman, but no luck.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Brian McNaughton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.