"Faust" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ballet scene of Gounod's most popular opera Mephistopheles conjures up visions of Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy to beguile the jaded interest of Faust. The list reads almost like a catalogue of the operas of Massenet whose fine talent was largely given to the celebration of the famous courtesans of the ancient world. With the addition of a few more names from the roster ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... there were the Topp Brothers who came and stayed a whole week in Crofter's Hotel, and gave a different play every night. There were all the best known dramas, "Lady Audley's Secret," and "East Lynne" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and once they even gave "Faust,"—without music, it is true, but a splendid reproduction nevertheless, with the biggest and tallest Topp brother as Mephisto, all in red satin and, every one ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... would not have attacked us in this war if we had given Macedonia to them, although it is not certain, because the frontiers of their ambitions are in Constantinople, Salonica and on the Adriatic. Still Serbia could not barter her soul like Faust with Mephistopheles. Five hundred years ago the Serbs and Greeks defended Macedonia from the Turkish invasion. In 1912 it was Serbia with Greece again who liberated Macedonia from the Turkish yoke. Bulgaria never defended Macedonia from the Turks. Her first fighting for ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... strike new chords out of her nature,—and wept at my work! I had not the courage to tear myself abruptly away. I suggested an hour of the opera—I gave her the public as a protector—and they sang 'Faust.' It was then that, knowing myself so well, I looked out into the auditorium and saw you! It was Providence that put you in my way. I thought it was accident. I am sure I need ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... after the completion of his "cure," Sand read Faust far the first time. At first he was amazed at that work, which seemed to him an orgy of genius; then, when he had entirely finished it, he reconsidered his first impression, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sport of the Japanese walnut (Juglans sieboldiana). Since its nut is heart-shaped, it has the name of "cordiformis" added to its species name. There are many of these sports, some of which have been propagated under the varietal names of Faust, Lancaster, Fodermaier, Wright, Walters, Canoka, ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... "On jouait Faust," I read, "et jamais le celebre personnage de Goethe n'adore plus exquise Gretchen. Miss Nadine Neroni est, en effet, une ideale Marguerite a la taille bien prise, au visage joli eclaire des deux yeux grands et doux. Et lorsqu'elle commenca a chanter, ce fut un veritable ravissement: ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... being reminded, as I looked at him, of another black poodle, which Faust entertained for a short time with unhappy results, and I thought that a very moderate degree of incantation would be enough to bring the fiend out of ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... only guest on such an occasion. Once between the courses, when he rose, as usual, to walk about, he wandered into the drawing-room, and seating himself at the orchestrelle began to play the beautiful flower-song from "Faust." It was a thing I had not seen him do before, and I never saw him do it again. When he came back to the table ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... side. Frank thrilled at seeing his wife's hand in his mother's. Marion nodded over the piano at the men, and presently played a snatch of Carmen, then wandered off into the barbaric strength of Tannhauser, and as suddenly again into the ballet music of Faust. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... (1858) I played Karl in "Faust and Marguerite," a jolly little part with plenty of points in it, but not nearly as good a part as Puck. Progress on the stage is often crab-like, and little parts, big parts, and no parts at all must be accepted as "all in the day's work." ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Apostles in Italy; but in Germany, and still farther north, in Sweden and Norway, it is Walpurgisnacht,—when goblins, witches, hags, and devils hold high holiday, mounting on their brooms for the Brocken. And it was on this night that Mephistopheles carried Faust on his wondrous ride, and showed him the spectre of Margaret with the red line round her throat. Miss Bremer, in her "Life in Dalecarlia," gives the following account of the origin of this custom:—"It is so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... quite inconceivable, like 'Faust' and 'The Scarlet Letter,' ... I thought that ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... one—who cannot like until she is first beloved. Don't you remember poor, pale Winnie, the maid who used to take us on our walks all the summer at Dawling; how she used to pluck the leaves from the flowers, like Faust's Marguerite, saying, "He loves me a little—passionately, not at all." Now if I were loved passionately, I might love a little; and if loved a little—it should be not ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and souls." Has Goethe ever written anything like this? Certainly not. Therefore the "Monthly" is right at p. 11 of the Opinions. Stephens must be equal, if not superior, to the author of "Faust." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "Given an inversion of their relative positions, I feel like Faust befriended by Mephistopheles. I felt it when he stood by my side on the hilltop, seven years ago. I felt it when he thrust that money into my hand, and bade me go and see what I could make of life, bade me go, without a word of kindness, without a touch of his fingers, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... picture—Faust and Margaret in the arbor; behind stood Mephistophiles, with his devilish smile. The Kammerjunker's Mamsell was Margaret. When the doors were opened she sent forth aloud cry, and ran away; she would not stay, she was so afraid. The group was disarranged, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... he said, bitterly, "every time I see this play of 'Faust,' and hear Edouard De Reszke's deep bass speak for His Majesty the Devil, that His Majesty really made this world. I'd know it but for the paradox of such divine perfection before my eyes in the living reality of a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... power" that fell upon him unpremeditated. His emotions were of that fatal violence which distinguishes so many illustrious but unhappy souls from the mass of peaceable mankind. In the early part of last century a set of illustrations to Faust by Retzch used to be greatly admired; about one of them, a picture of Faust and Margaret in the arbour, Shelley says in a letter to a friend: "The artist makes one envy his happiness that he can sketch such things with calmness, which I only dared look ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... as old Faust and his deal with the devil. My soul was still my own. But my body was community property—and I couldn't, by God, so much as bite my own tongue without feeling like a bloody murderer—and being made ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... Was it for this," he cries, "I subdued my life, lost my youth, rooted out love; for the sake of this wolfish thirst of knowledge?" No dog, said Faust, in Goethe's poem, driven to the same point by the weariness of knowledge, no dog would longer live this life. My tyrant aim has brought me into a desert; worse still, the purity of my aim is lost. Can I truly say that I have worked ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... enthusiastic and persevering in the prosecution of their purpose, and more fortunate in awakening popularity and admiration among their contemporaries. In the instances of Apollonius Tyanaeus and others among the ancients, and of Cornelius Agrippa, Roger Bacon and Faust among the moderns, we are acquainted with many biographical particulars of their lives, and can trace with some degree of accuracy, their peculiarities of disposition, and observe how they were led gradually from one study and one mode of action to another. But the magicians of the East, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... committing suicide. It was not difficult to dissuade him, and he was brought in triumph back to the city. The coffin was sold off. From the profits and the remainder of the fund to find Schulz' body a party for Bohemians was organized-Gottschalk Schulz himself was enthroned as Faust, world-weary, in a corner. The gifted Doctor Berthold Bryller appeared as one of the wealthy literati. Lutz Laus played the Pope. The high school teacher Spinoza Spass—the clown of the Cafe Kloesschen—had wrapped a Siegfried-costume around his belly, ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... difference in kind between a great work and a small one. A good sonnet may be finished in an hour, and is a pleasant recreation; but the composition of a tragedy requires a severe, protracted and laborious effort. Goethe's finest songs were written in a moment, a flash of inspiration; but Faust may be called the work of his lifetime. He himself describes the difficulties which attend the composition of a tragedy, in such a manner as may well deter others from attempting it. How few, indeed, are the dramatic ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... united comprehension, of mind touching mind, like the little thrill of voice touching voice on the resolving sevenths of the old duets in thirds. Or even when, remembering some graver page—say the dedication of "Faust" to Goethe's dead contemporaries—one fetches the book and reaches it silently to the other one, not daring to read it out loud.... It is when these things happen that one is really getting the good of books; ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... waltzed like an angel, and so far his dictionary did not contain the word "fear;" but he knew nothing of poetry or art, and only liked some kinds of music, amongst which, it is to be feared, "Soldiers of the Queen," and the now much-abused chorus from "Faust," ranked high in his estimation. He was just simply a healthy young Englishman, clean-limbed and clean-minded, with a tremendous appetite for pleasure, a magnificent frame, and a heart as light and buoyant as a cork; therefore, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... would not have advised you to undertake Faust. It is mad stuff, and goes quite beyond all ordinary feeling. But since you have done it of your own accord, without asking my advice, you will see how you will get through. Faust is so strange an individual that only few can sympathize with his internal condition. Then the character of Mephistopheles is, on account of his irony, and also because he is a living result of an extensive acquaintance with the world, also very difficult. But you will see what lights ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the city and repeople it with the shades of former inhabitants or visitors to suit your taste or knowledge of its history. There is, for instance, one visitor whom I can quite see roaming about in nocturnal Prague—Dr. Faust. Local legend prefers to call him Wilhelm instead of Heinrich, but that does not ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... in Haarlem believes—and that is, that Guttenberg, and Werner, and Faust, in pretending that they were the discoverers of the art of printing, were egregious specimens of the art of lying; for that that noble discovery was made by no human being save and except an illustrious citizen of Haarlem, and an undeniable proof of it exists in the fact, that his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... the Opera house, where Faust was being played. I had a great desire to see Faust in the original, and though my German is not up to Goethe's standard, I could follow the plot somewhat, and I was eagerly watching for Margaret to make her appearance on the stage. After ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... study theology under the orthodox mystic, Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), who in 1757 had become first professor in the theological faculty. The boy varied the monotony of his studies by pranks which revealed his unbalanced character, including an attempt to raise spirits with the aid of Dr Faust's Hoellenzwang. His orthodoxy was, however, unimpeachable, his talent conspicuous, and in 1761 he was appointed lecturer on biblical exegesis, and preacher (Katechet) at the church of St Peter. His eloquence soon gave him a reputation, and in 1766 he was appointed professor ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the eighteenth century there was pointed out to visitors in the old town of Krakau the house of the magician Twardowski, who quite properly was called the Faust of Poland, because of his dealings ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... author always heard a voice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of things at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced, smiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that terrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... appropriated the results of the philosophising of his time, in so far as he could use these to sustain his own positions, and caustically rejected those which he could not thus use. He soon got by heart the negative lessons of Voltaire and found, to use the words which he puts into the mouth of Faust, that while it freed him from his superstitions, at the same time it made the world empty and dismal beyond endurance. In the mechanical philosophy which presented itself in the Systeme de la Nature as a positive substitute for his lost faith, he found only that which filled his poet's soul with ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... fairy ring, which might be supposed at first sight to be an illustration of a nursery tale, but the text describing a Witch's Sabbath, rapidly dispels the idea. Nor does a version of the popular Faust legend—"Dr. John Faustus"—appear to be edifying for young people. This and "Friar Bacon" are of the class which lingered the longest—the magical and oracular literature. Even to-day it is quite possible that dream-books and prophetical ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... him to see her driving herself through this piteous catechism. The lantern of memory flashed a moment on to the immortal picture of Faust and Margaret. Was it not only that winter they had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... laugh in Faust? Cunningham is a queer duck. I don't suppose there's a corner on the globe he hasn't had a peek at. He has a vast knowledge of the arts. His real name nobody seems to know. He can make himself very likable ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... and "Faust" and "Margaret" tell their story to all who have felt life's struggles and temptations, whether they have read them in Goethe's version or not. Added to this power of pathos and sentiment is the deep religious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... rubbing my hands, "you are very kind, and so is our mutual friend; I shall be happy to make myself useful in German; and if you think a good translation from Goethe—his 'Sorrows' for example, or more particularly his 'Faust'—" ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Goethe, in "Faust," has made an effort to follow the process by which a weak woman and a weaker man, ignorant of the forces struggling within them and susceptible to malign influences from without, through terrible mistakes and bitter failure, at length reach ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... in classic Italy. It is the grotesque, lastly, which, colouring the same drama with the fancies of the North and of the South in turn, exhibits Sganarelle capering about Don Juan and Mephistopheles crawling about Faust. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... which Liszt's virtuosic genius stood him in good stead, makes one feel as though Liszt could never quite keep his eye on the fact, and finally became engrossed in the weaving of a musical pattern fairly extraneous to his idea. The "Faust Symphony" is, after all, an exception. Berlioz, too, failed on the whole to achieve the musical novel. Whenever he did attain musical form, it was generally at the expense of his program. Are the somewhat picturesque episodes of "Harold in Italy," whatever their virtues, and they are many, more ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... light, heat, and electricity are seen to be due to the rhythmical vibration of atoms. There is thus no such thing as rest: from the planet to the ultimate particle, all things are endlessly moving: and the mystic song of the Earth-Spirit in "Faust" is recognized as the expression of the sublimest truth ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Queries, vi. 496. Mr. I. Gollancz informs me he remembers a version entitled "Pepper, Salt, and Mustard," with the refrain just given. Abroad it is Grimm's "Juniper Tree" (No. 47), where see further parallels. The German rhyme is sung by Margaret in the mad scene of Goethe's "Faust." ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... "But tell me," he exclaimed, catching sight of Evadne placidly sleeping in the high-backed chair, with her hat in her hand held up so as to conceal the lower part of her face; "Are visions about? Is that one that I see there before me? If I were Faust, I should love such a Marguerite. I wish she would let her hat drop. I want to see the lower part of her face. The upper part satisfies me. It is fine. The balance of brow and frontal development ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Dane roughly. "Here Nick says he'd give up his life if the war could be stopped and you bob up and tell him to make good, throwing sort of a Faust effect over the whole dinner. All right for Nick and Arnold Bates—but how about you, Simec? How will you stop the war if they shuffle off? I'll bite once on anything; how will you do it?" There was a general movement of the diners. Dane's wife ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Faust sold his to Mephistopheles. Your Lieutenant became your master; you found it convenient to believe his version of every thing, and to justify him in every thing, and you ended in making all his devilments your own, and adopting ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... single poet, nor even of many poets, but is in fact the creation of the people,—indeed, of many peoples widely separated in time and space, and is thus in a sense the voice of the race,—it resembles in this respect the Faust legends, which are the basis of Goethe's world-poem; or the mediaeval visions of a future state, which found their supreme and final expression in Dante's 'Divina Commedia,' which sums up within itself the art, the religion, the politics, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... trente-troisieme de mon age." This she professes to translate from the editio princeps published by Jean Lange in 1667. As a matter of fact it is taken from the version given in Lenglet-Dufresnoy's book. And Lenglet-Dufresnoy followed, not the edition of 1667, but the later edition published by J. M. Faust at Frankfort in 1706. In this the words are "trigesimo tertio," whereas in the editio princeps they are "vicesimo tertio," and in W. Cooper's English translation of 1669, "in the 23rd year of my age," thus bringing ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... said I, suddenly reviving with a new idea, "that a portfolio of engravings is a handsome thing to have in one's parlor or library? Add to it, you know, from time to time; but begin with 'Margaret,' perhaps, and Retzsch's 'Hamlet' or 'Faust,'—or a collection of fine wood engravings, such as Mrs. Harris has,—and perhaps one of Albert Duerer's ugly things to show off with. What do you think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... that the robber was Faust of Mayence, the partner of Gutenburg, and that it was thus that the honor of the invention passed from Holland to Germany where Gutenberg produced his invention of movable type twelve years later. There is a statue of the Coster in front of the church, and, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... ideal rather than practical activity. 'The time is out of joint,' says your Danish Englishman, Hamlet. 'O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.' I cannot get rid of that absurd megalomania. To make matters worse, there is the Faust in me that sticks in every good German who thinks anything of himself. 'I've studied now Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Medicine,' and so on. As a result, a man has all the more chances of being disillusioned at every turn, and so would ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Tiffany apartments. She and Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, Mrs. Henry M. Sanders and Mrs. George Putnam, had a delightful luncheon with Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. She was invited by Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lauterbach to hear the opera of Faust, which was followed by a supper at the Waldorf. With a relative she attended the "Authors' Uncut Leaves Club," at Sherry's. One Sunday she went to hear Robert Collyer and the diary says: "His grand face, his rich voice, his white hair, were all as attractive as ever; he was a beautiful ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... jeunesse doree of dead ages. Here—what do you find in a huge stone well sunk into the bowels of the earth? About as enticing as a plunge into a dry cistern, suddenly unroofed? If spectres we must hunt, do let them be festive, like those Faust danced with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... exhausted. Weariness was the only reality of which he was conscious. He must turn his mind to other things. Having breakfasted, he remembered what day it was, and presently took down a volume of his Goethe, opening at the Easter morning scene in Faust, favourite reading with him. This inspired him with a desire to go into the open air; it was a bright day, and there would be life in the streets. Just as he began to prepare himself for walking, there came a knock at his door, and ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... as purely the work of imagination as Middleton's "Witch," or the Hags in "Macbeth," or in Goethe's 'Faust.' Horace used Canidia as a byword for all that was hateful in the creatures of her craft, filthy as they were in their lives and odious in their persons. His literary and other friends were as familiar ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... souls who cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was leaving—and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of Faust, "Stay, thou art fair!" Whether it was by beer, or by shouting, or by music, or by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she would go back to the chase of it—and no sooner be fairly started than her chariot would be thrown off the track, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... looks like it, is not the home of John D. Rockefeller." He sprung up, drew an imaginary mantle about him, grasped one elbow with the other hand, dropped his head into the free palm and was Cassius or Hamlet or Faust—all one to Aunt Basha. His left eyebrow screwed up and his right down, and he glowered. "List to her," he began, and shot out a hand, immediately to replace it where it was most needed, under his elbow. "But list, ye Heavens and protect the lamb from this ravening wolf. She chargeth—oh ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... trick of his, and he had a remarkably sweet, clear pipe. He knew that Clemency, if she were to hear his whistle, would know who was near. He whistled "Way down upon the Suwanee River" through, then he began on the "Flower Song" from Faust, walking all the time quite rapidly but with alert ears. He was half through the "Flower Song" when he stopped short. He thought he heard something. He listened, and did hear quite distinctly an exceedingly soft little ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... Edition. Hayward quotes from Goethe himself, that, though of course much of a Poem must evaporate in a Prose Translation, yet the Essence must remain. Well; I distinguish as little of that Essential Poetry in the Faust now as when I first read it—longer ago than 'Le Bon Pasteur,' and in other subsequent Attempts. I was tempted to think this was some Defect—great Defect—in myself: but a Note at the end of the Volume informs me that a much greater Wit than I was in the same plight—even Coleridge; ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... on "the pleasure from exertion" Darwin has a point of contact with the practical idealism of former times—with the ideas of Lessing and Goethe, of Condorcet and Fichte. The continual striving which was the condition of salvation to Faust's soul, is also the condition of salvation to mankind. There is a holy fire which we ought to keep burning, if adaptation is really to be improvement. If, as I have tried to show in my Philosophy of Religion, the innermost ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... what Gretchen says to Faust: 'Love me as much as you like, but no kissing, that is vulgar.' I agree with Gretchen—it is vulgar. Oh, Mr. Stuart, what a surprise this is! I have just been reading a letter from your sister, and she doesn't say ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... at Avallon, in South France, I went to see 'Faust' played at the little country theater: it was done with scarcely any means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains, and a blue light or two. But the night on the Brocken was nevertheless extremely appalling to me,—a strange ghastliness ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... superhuman, shakes? Thy soul's high calling, where? Where is the breast, which from itself a world did bear, And shaped and cherished—which with joy expanded, To be our peer, with us, the Spirits, banded? Where art thou, Faust, whose voice has pierced to me, Who towards me pressed with all thine energy? He art thou, who, my presence breathing, seeing, Trembles through all the depths of being, A writhing ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... clear light of day. There is nothing more to be done to it; there is no concealment about it. But in romantic art there is seldom this completeness. The workman lingers, he would fain add another touch, his ideal eludes him. Is a Gothic cathedral ever really finished? Is "Faust" finished? Is "Hamlet" explained? The modern spirit is mystical; its architecture, painting, poetry employ shadow to produce their highest effects: shadow and color rather than contour. On the Greek heroic stage there were a few figures, two or three at most, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the young Leipsiger, and caused breach of what had been a contract for a three years' travelling companionship. In May, 1758, Lessing, aged twenty-nine, returned to his old work in Berlin. Again he translated, edited, criticised. He wrote a tragedy, "Philotas," and began a "Faust." He especially employed his critical power in "Letters upon the Latest Literature," known as his Literatur briefe. Dissertations upon fable, led also to Lessing's "Fables," produced in this ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... the second part of Faust, is a philosophy of literature set in poetry; the work of one who found himself the master of histories, mythologies, philosophies, sciences, and national literatures, in the encyclopaedical manner in which modern erudition, with its international intercourse ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the following delicate matter. Mr. Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may not know—" Was there NO way of helping him, saving him? A bargain was a bargain, and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a reasonable obligation. I wouldn't have lifted a little finger to save Faust. But poor Soames! Doomed to pay without respite an eternal price for nothing but a fruitless search and ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... legend lay nearer to the spirit of contemporary poetry. Goethe had not long before evolved his Mephistopheles from the "attendant spirit" attached by that same sixteenth century to the Paracelsus of Protestantism, Faust; Tennyson was already meditating a scene full of the enchantment of the Arthurian sword Excalibur. Browning's peremptory rejection of such springs of poetry marks one of his limitations as a poet. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... to the scientist. His mind roamed to flying machines and submarines, but he never made one; the reason given by him in the latter case being his fear that it would be put to piratical use. He had something in him of Faust; in some respects he reminds us of William James, who also started as a {613} painter and ended as an omniverous student of outre things and as ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... dramatic poets are endowed with the power of creating beings who seem to act and speak with perfect independence, so that the poet is nothing more than the relator of what takes place. When Goethe had conceived Faust and Margarete, Mephistopheles and Wagner, they moved and had their being without any exercise of his will. But in the peculiar power which Petronius exercises, in its application to every scene, to every individual ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... admirers of Pauline Leroux. We have heard of swoons and hysterics along the more impressionable audiences of La Scala, during the performance of the ballet of "La Vestale;" and have witnessed with admiration the striking effect of the fascinative scene in "Faust." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... vehicles, and warlike instruments, and mystic-looking symbols—of chains of interlaced knots and complex zigzags, all so crowding on each other that the tired eye feels as if it had run through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony or Faust Sabbaths. When this field of investigation and speculation is surveyed in all its affluence, one is not surprised to find that it has been taken in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the skilful ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... resourceful and far-seeing though he was—he failed because a certain sympathy is awakened for Mephistopheles in being, so to say, chivied out of his bargain, when he had complied with the terms of the contract by Faust; and Gounod in his opera does exactly for "immediate dramatic effect," what we hold it would be necessary to do for R. L. Stevenson. Goethe, with his casuistries which led him to allegory and all manner of overdone symbolisms and perversions in the Second ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... fire, of course the audience thought a miracle was taking place, unable to understand a simple stage-trick which all the boys in the gallery who delight in "Faust" now understand. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... from the gravest political purposes. He was ready at such a moment to throw anything over for the sake of the sudden love-chase which had come in his way. He bragged of his amours, and boasted that he had never failed of success with any woman who seemed to him worth pursuing. Like Faust, he loved to reel from desire to enjoyment, and from enjoyment back again into desire. Bolingbroke was the first of a great line of parliamentary debaters who have made for themselves a distinct place in English history, and whose rivals ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... fled from the sun, And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer, The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, And the devil of Martin Luther sat By the stout monk's side ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with busts at intervals of Cicero and Dante, and other severe and melancholy personages. The rapiers upon the high white chimney-piece were more to his taste. He had taken them down the first day after his arrival, and had stamped and cut and thrust in the most approved style, in the presence of Faust, the black poodle. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Melancholy"; a Browning, complete; that inimitably jocund fictional prank, Frederic's "March Hares," together with the same author's fine and profoundly just "Damnation of Theron Ware"; Taylor's translation of Faust; "The [broken-backed] Egoist"; "Lavengro" (Io touched its magic pages with tender fingers), and a fat, faded, reddish volume so worn and obscured that she at once took it down and made explorative entry. She was still deep in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fellow's that is eating you up with his great eyes at the same time that he is laughing at you with his big mouth! Now, Cap, my little man, be a woman! Don't you stick at trifles! Think of Jael and Sisera! Think of Judith and Holofernes! And the devil and Doctor Faust, if necessary, and don't you blanch! All stratagems are fair in love and war—especially in war, and most especially in such a war as this is likely to be—a contest in close ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... strongly resembling her sister in so many points, they are nearly unknown. Almost the only poetical work of the greatest Poet that the world has seen for ages, that is really and generally read in England, is Faust, the translations of which are almost endless; while no single person has as yet appeared to attempt to give, in an English dress, in any collective or systematic manner, those smaller productions of the genius of Goethe ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... beard of Brother Jonathan, with the baton of a Yankee band-master; and then it was assured that the much advertised composer was a joking American masquerading as a Slav, possibly the vender of some new religious cure born in the fanatical bake-ovens of Western America. "Faust" alternated with "Les Huguenots" at the Opera, Pilsner beer was on tap at the Cafe Monferino—why worry over exotic stories told of this visitor's abnormal musical powers? And little did anyone surmise that he had just given a symphonic setting to Lingwood Evans's insurrectionary ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... than that which cometh to me now I likened it—the necromancy which Drew richest vintage from the rugged boards— Unto the spell wherewith he'd bound himself— The spell by which he drew from simplest things Conceptions beautiful, as Faust drew wine From the rude table; for this friend of mine Was a true poet, though he seldom wrote: The wealth which might have royally endowed Some noble charity for coming time Was idly ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... is belle fille, literally "beautiful girl." To Fougas' address "Ma belle fille!" Mme. Langevin replies: "I am not beautiful, and I am not a girl." It suggests the similar retort received by Faust from Marguerite, when he addressed ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... over and around the knob, kissed his hand jauntily to his battery commander, now riding down the opposite side of the parade, backed deliberately away the full length of the sash across the room, then, humming a favorite snatch from "Faust," deliberately wound himself into the bright crimson web, and, making a broad flat loop near the farther end and without stopping his song, nodded coolly to Ananias to come on with the belt. In the same calm and deliberate fashion he finished his military toilet, ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... it must have been to have lived in Heidelberg, and felt the very atmosphere you breathed filled with wisdom! Did you ever go to Frankfort? Did you see the statue of Goethe there? Can you read 'Faust' in the original? Oh, I should like to so much, but I know nothing of German. I never could learn the character, I am convinced. French and Italian only. There was such a beautiful picture of 'Margaret' in the Academy of Fine Arts ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... eyes that seraglio which a loving woman knows how to create and which a man never refuses. Paquita responded to that passion which is felt by all really great men for the infinite—that mysterious passion so dramatically expressed in Faust, so poetically translated in Manfred, and which urged Don Juan to search the heart of women, in his hope to find there that limitless thought in pursuit of which so many hunters after spectres have started, which wise men think to discover in science, and which mystics find in God alone. ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... supplement his performance at the time. The violin number was so well received that Mr. Fairman added a little minuet of Boccherini's without accompaniment, and then John felt that his time had surely come. But he had to sit, drawing long breaths, through a Liszt fantasie on themes from Faust before his suspense was ended by Miss Clara, who was apparently mistress of ceremonies and who said to him, "Will ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... our data verified by its actual appearance, it could not be a subject of deeper interest than the bringing ashore of the ship's mail. Had we not gone to so remote a position, we could not possibly ever have become aware how deeply we are indebted to the genius and discoveries of Cadmus and Faust, whose true worshippers are the corps editorial. Now for ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... for that it was very quiet out there, and he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything. Nothing left to do but ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... adds: "The crisis over, then commenced the most heartrending labor at which I have ever been present," and she pictures him to us agonized, for days and weeks, running after the bits of lost inspiration. Goethe, likewise, in a letter to Humboldt regarding his Faust, which occupied him for sixty years, full of interruptions and gaps: "The difficulty has been to get through strength of will what is really to be gotten only by a spontaneous act of nature." Zola, according to his biographer, Toulouse, "imagines a novel, always starting out with ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... personal love should shape and dominate their lives instead of God. "He for God only; she for God in him," phrases the idea of Milton and of ancient Islam; it is the formula of sexual infatuation, a formula quite easily inverted, as the end of Goethe's Faust ("The woman soul leadeth us upward and on") may witness. The whole drift of modern religious feeling is against this exaggeration of sexual feeling, these moods of sexual slavishness, in spiritual things. Between the healthy love of ordinary mortal lovers in love and the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... an autobiography as faithful as those of St. Augustine or of Rousseau, though transcendently purer and greater. It is a vision, like the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan, but written with incomparably wider knowledge and keener insight. It is a soul's history, like Goethe's "Faust," but attaining to a far loftier level of faith and thoughtfulness and moral elevation. It is a divine poem, like Milton's "Paradise Lost," dealing, as Milton does, with God and Satan, and heaven and hell, but of wider range and intenser utterance. With the plays of Shakespeare, in their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical "Faust," deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest to the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which is embodied to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will agree. The ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... accustomed to address legislative assemblies, he was naturally desirous of knowing the place, if place there was, where such images and illustrations were to be found. The truth was that, if Webster had ever read Goethe's Faust,—which he of course never had done,—he might have referred his old friend to that passage where Faust, gazing at the setting sun, aches to follow it in its course for ever. "See," he exclaims, "how the green-girt cottages shimmer in the setting sun. He bends and sinks,—the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... on board of a man-of-war. Having no name, it was necessary to christen him on the ship's books, and the first lieutenant, who had entered him, struck with his remarkable expression of countenance, and being a German scholar, had named him Mephistopheles Faust, from whence his Christian name had been razeed to Mesty. Mesty in other points was an eccentric character; at one moment, when he remembered his lineage, he was proud to excess, at others he was grave and almost sullen—but ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the nineteenth century next to "Faust." It is in the same set with "Agamemnon," with "Lear," with the literature that we now instinctively regard as high and ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... rapidly smashed the strongest fortifications of reinforced concrete, our military authorities promptly acquired. Must we be ashamed of this instrument of destruction and take from the lips of the "cultured world" the wry reproach that from "Faust" and the Ninth Symphony we have sunk our national pride to the 42-centimeter guns? No! Only firm will and determination to achieve, that is to say, German power, distinguishes the host of warriors ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... sentiments of grief, coming near the words of despair of Faust. There is a tone in them of what ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... cool, and now and then the scent of some flowering bush trailed like a visible cloud across their path. Then suddenly the whole avenue was full of little red lights, like the garden in "Faust" when Mephistopheles performs his magic on it. Here and there the huge headlights of a car shone on the roadway, magnifying every rut in the asphalt, and bringing out strange, vivid shades in the grass and the hydrangea bushes. They were passing a frowning palace set on a piece ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... out to tea at the Wilkinses in Boston, I'm pretty sure to find Mr. Wilkins all smiles and Sunshine, or Mrs. Wilkins all gentleness and politeness. I am entertained delightfully, and after tea little Miss Wilkins shows me her photograph album, and plays the march from "Faust" on the piano for me. I go away highly pleased with my visit; and yet the Wilkinses may fight like cats and dogs in private. I may no sooner have struck the sidewalk than Mr. W. will be reaching ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... return from Strasburg to his native city in the year 1438, he established a printing-press in Mainz, and produced from it many printed books, principally in Latin. He had for some time as a kind of partner in his art, a man of the name of Faust, or Fust, the son of a goldsmith of Mainz, who afterwards separating from Gutenberg went to Paris, where he printed books, and in consequence was persecuted as a magician or sorcerer; so wonderful was it ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... the years, to the warm rich youth of the nations, Childlike in virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and pleasure, Childlike still, and still near to their God, while the day-spring of Eden Lingered in rose-red rays on the peaks of Ionian mountains. Down to the mothers, as Faust went, I go, to the roots of our manhood, Mothers of us in our cradles; of us once more in our glory. New-born, body and soul, in the great pure world which shall be In the renewing of all things, when man shall return to his Eden Conquering evil, and death, and shame, and the slander ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... house No. 161 Friedrich Strasse. There we lived in the closest intimacy, sharing meals and outdoor exercise. Motley by that time had arrived at talking German fluently; he occupied himself not only in translating Goethe's poem "Faust," but tried his hand even in composing German verses. Enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, he used to spice his conversation abundantly with quotations from these his favorite authors. A pertinacious arguer, so much so that sometimes he watched my awakening in order to continue ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Bixby's. He was a moody man, who sat by the stove and spoke to no one. Bixby had been a publisher, and was proud that he had first issued Hayward's "Faust" in America. He was also proud that his hotel was much frequented by literary men and naval officers. He was very kind to me. Once when I complained to the clerk that the price of my rooms was too high, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate, said Novalis, and Farfrae's character was just the reverse of Henchard's, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been described—as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... beyond his abilities; all the French words seemed too noisy, too brilliant or too vulgar, or too solemn to render these mute accents, these intonations veiled as if in religious mystery, by which the author of Faust intended to express the subtle sounds and even the silence of nature. We know that it is only in German poetry that we can hear the grass growing from the bosom of the earth, and the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... make them of more durable metal. But alas, such an innovation was costly and his money had given out. Therefore, much as he dreaded to part with his secret, he was forced to take into partnership a rich metal worker by the name of John Faust." ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... hill is visible to the eastward, conspicuous for its bleakness, standing well above the dark intervening fir-clad hills. This is the Brocken, the highest mountain in Northern Germany, on the summit of which Goethe's Faust was evolved. It is difficult to realise that it is, roughly, 5,000 feet above sea level, or the camp 2,000. The ascent in this part from the foot hills being gradual, the surrounding country is not so imposing as one would expect. Outside the camp is a small picturesque lake, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... In Goethe's "Faust" is an allusion to a mysterious legend that had its rise in storied Tegel. On May Eighteenth, in the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight. Goethe came here, walking over from Berlin, dined, and walked on to Potsdam. But before he left he saw ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... something about music, but who actually has no prejudices.) "Her voice is such a one as MARGARET must have had when she sang by her spinning-wheel, before fate threw her in the way of FAUST. And these professional musicians will tear her reputation to pieces among themselves! Why should musical people be, of all others, most fond ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... Faust when at last he is labouring for others. As Wolsey puts it in Henry VIII: "Love thyself last," and "bear ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the form of Goethe greeted the city of his birth. He is represented as leaning on the trunk of a tree, holding in his right hand a roll of parchment, and in his left a wreath. The pedestal, which is also of bronze, contains bas reliefs, representing scenes from Faust, Wilhelm Meister and Egmont. In the evening Goethe's house, in a street near, was illuminated by arches of lamps between the windows, and hung with wreaths of flowers. Four pillars of colored lamps lighted the statue. At nine o'clock the choir of singers came ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... was vaguely conscious of some change in his daughter, and when one day he heard her singing "Faust," he was perplexed; and when she argued that it was a beautiful and human aspiration, he looked at her as if he had never seen her before. He asked her how she had come to think such a thing, and was perplexed by her embarrassments. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... congratulation to Mr. Bayard Taylor for his translation of "Faust," which occupies the same place, as regards German Poetry, that Mr. Bryant's translation of Homer does to Greek Poetry. The difficulty of the task which Mr. Taylor set himself, the task of rendering the original ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... have seen it twice. Mamma lets me go to 'Polyeucte' and 'Guillaume Tell', and to the 'Prophete', but she won't take me to see 'Faust'—and it is just 'Faust' that I want to see. Isn't it provoking that one can't see everything, hear everything, understand everything? You see, we could not half understand that story which seemed to amuse the people so much in the other room. Why did they send back ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... are a crack-brained jackanapes, with your damned fantastics!" bellowed Mac, angry in his turn. "What do you mean,—you, who are a perfect little saint in your life,—what do you mean by thrusting all these foul heresies at me, as if you were a veritable citizen of Sodom, or a rejuvenized Faust, who have just replenished your stock of 'experiences,' as you call them, by seducing Margaret and stabbing her brother? Burn your books, if that filth is all they teach you,—and mend your manners, if you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various |
