Quotes About Mephistopheles

why would Mephistopheles want a soul? What does he do with it when he gets it, of what use is it?

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.

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.

Lyceum Theatre. The reviewer for the Times noted that the redskins had been "greatly scared at its horror" as they watched the show unfold from their boxes. Henry Irving played Mephistopheles,

The smile he gave me in reply would have made the fortune of a Thespian Mephistopheles.

THE WITCH. [dancing]. O I shall lose my wits, I fear, Do I, again, see Squire Satan here! MEPHISTOPHELES. Woman, the name offends my ear! THE WITCH. Why so? What has it done to you? MEPHISTOPHELES. It has long since to fable-books been banished; But men are none the better for it; true, The wicked one, but not the wicked ones, has vanished.

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

A part of that Power that, always wishing for Evil, only knows how to do Good. -Mephistopheles

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

Blonde: A word sir, Have you got a cure For freckles? They come out all over In the summer. Mephistopheles: Ah, Summer speckles, Dotted like a tabby cat. Take an extract Of toad-tongue, Boil with frog spawn At dawn, And spread upon your skin When the moon is thin And waning.

And which devil do you prefer? Dante's?" "No. Much too terrifying. Too medieval for my taste." "Mephistopheles?" "Not him, either. He's too pleased with himself. Too much a trickster, like a crooked lawyer ... Anyway, I never trust people who smile a lot." "What about the one in The Karamazovs?" "Petty. A civil servant with dirty nails. I suppose the devil I prefer is Milton's fallen angel.

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.

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...

Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.

Every man is his own Mephistopheles, don't you think? If I hadn't come along you'd have made a bargain with some other power. And you would have had your fortune, and your women, and your strawberries. All those torments I've made you suffer.

Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord? Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom. Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus? Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris. (It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.)

Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistopheles!

Lies told fresh in the night fires of our dwindling solstice. A yarn becomes a legend. Tobacco spittle sears on charred logs. Light like foot lamps in a Bowery cabaret. Shadows fall upwardly to dance on a white forehead. All ablaze but the sockets of the eyes. Dark rings hold their truths. A good man turns wicked by the light of a Sturgeon Moon. Mephistopheles one and all. Savage saturnalia.

Mephistopheles replied, "I am the spirit who always denies!

I left Mephistopheles, the angels, and the remnants of our handmade world, saying, "I choose Earth.