Faust quotes:

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In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust. -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, happy he who still hopes he can emerge from Error's boundless sea! - Faust. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that. -- Woody Allen
Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience. -- Baldur von Schirach
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman. -- Boris Pasternak
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... -- Thomas Harris
Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver; Faust sold his for some extra years of youth; Marilyn Monroe deserted Jesus Christ for Arthur Miller. -- Nicholas Samstag
Dante can be understood only within the context of Italian thought, and Faust would be unthinkable if divorced from its German background; but both are part of our common cultural heritage. -- Gustav Stresemann
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. -- Thomas Huxley
My favorite record shop was called Recommended Records, in South London near where I lived - they did all the original Faust reissues that came out in 1979, and they also did a lot of Sun Ra stuff. They were a great record shop. -- Tim Gane
There rises the moon, broad and tranquil, through the branches of a walnut tree on a hill opposite. I apostrophize it in the words of Faust; "O gentle moon, that lookest for the last time upon my agonies!" --or something to that effect. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. -- Joseph Campbell
For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. -- Rufus Wainwright
Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust seems to have exerted a big influence on Star Wars. You know, the "give up your soul for immortality" or something. -- Cass Sunstein
I am part of the part that once was everything, Part of the darkness which gave birth to light"¦ Mephistopheles, from Faust. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment, 'Stay, thou art so fair. -- Robert Kennedy
Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic. -- Otto von Bismarck
Faust was this mythical figure who sold his soul to the devil for unlimited power. The Japanese have made that Faustian bargain because they don't have coal, oil or hydro power. -- Michio Kaku
Squeezing yourself to ooze out the last ounce of sex allure is terribly hard. I'd like to do roles like Julie in Bury the Dead, Gretchen in Faust and Teresa in Cradle Song. -- Marilyn Monroe
I didn't want to make a record that was just guitar and voice, that was just the technology available to me. At the time, I remember thinking, "I am making a Faust album." That didn't translate. -- Devendra Banhart
The Metropolitan Opera, of course, is the gold standard in opera. The Met experience includes the huge stage, the vast audience, the elaborate sets. Anyone who saw 'Faust' there - I did - knows exactly what hell is like, complete with fire, smoke and terror. -- Karen DeCrow
The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings. -- Osamu Dazai
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. -- David Liss
Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt. -- George Bernard Shaw
Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: -- Joseph Campbell
In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust.... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will.... Each hour is precious. -- Anton Chekhov
I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider. For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust. I've been hanging out a bit with Lou Reed, and he's the complete opposite. He's into technology and is kind of like a toddler, compared to me, who's like an old 19th-century widow or something. -- Rufus Wainwright
Besides writing, I have been teaching myself to 'develop' my own photographic plates, and I haven't a stick of clothing or an exposed finger that isn't stained. I sit for hours in a dark-room feeling as if I were a very elderly Faust at some dreadful incantation, and come out of it, blinding at the light, like a Bastille prisoner. And yet I am not successful! -- Bret Harte

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