Quotes About Faust

For those of you who thought F. W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' was his greatest film, I have news for you: his 'Faust' blows it out of the water.

Murnau is neck to neck with Bergman as my favorite director. He's responsible for some of the best images in cinema of all time, from 'Nosferatu' to 'Faust' to 'Sunset.'

I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery...Oedipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust, regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver!

Things had certainly come down a long way since the great days of Faust and Mephistopheles, when a man could gain all the knowledge of the universe, achieve all the ambitions of his mind and all the pleasures of the flesh for the price of his soul.

ON A JANUARY EVENING of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

Literary theory, especially, cast its lot with a spirit of ceaseless skepticism and incessant interrogation; modeling itself on Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, it was "der Geist, der stets verneint"—the spirit that always negates.

In fact a favourite problem of [John Tyndall] is—Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.

Faust: What cheerful light breaks on my gloomy fancies, As in the midnight woods when moonlight floods the skies?

FAUST You seem to like eavesdropping. MEPHISTOPHELES I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

Faust: Nun gut wer bist du denn? Mephistopheles: Ein Theil von jener Kraft, Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.

In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan.

The two interpretations are mutually complementary. The structural—objective—interpretation seeks to embrace the whole span of the structure represented by the person of Faust, and then combine it with the genetic interpretation which recognizes that the Faust figure stands for the totality of Goethe's psychic situation, both conscious and unconscious, and for the whole history of his development.

Speer's moral corruption had its seed in his emotional attachment to Hitler–he likened it to Faust's fatal bargain with Mephistopheles. Achievement and success rooting it ever deeper over the years, he lived–almost addictively–in an increasingly vicious cycle of need and dependence.

so who are you in the end?" "I am a part of that power which eternally desires evil and eternally does good." Goethe, Faust*

Who art thou, then?" "Part of that Power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good." Goethe—Faust

Oh, thrice romantic Master, don't you want to stroll with your beloved by day under the cherries bursting into bloom, and int he evenings listen to Schubert's music? Won't it be pleasant for you to write with a quill by candlelight? Don't you want to sit, like Faust, over a retort, hoping to create a new homunculus?

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...

In fact a favourite problem of Tyndall is—Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.

In fact a favourite problem of [John Tyndall] is—Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.

A work of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of men. So Faust touches something in the soul of every German. So also Dante's fame is immortal, while The Shepherd of Hermas just failed of inclusion in the New Testament canon. Every period has its bias, its particular prejudice and its psychic ailment.

My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain. . . . For as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.

The Irishman shambles up to him and asks if there's any casual job going. "You don't look to me," says the supervisor, "as if you know the difference between a girder and a joist." "I do, too," says the Irishman indignantly. "The first of them wrote Faust and the second one wrote Ulysses.

Oh, Fausto, ahora tienes apenas una hora de vida, y serás maldecido para la eternidad. ¡Quedaos quietas, esferas celestiales siempre en movimiento, que el tiempo pare y no llegue nunca la medianoche!

James A. Connor