Faust, First Part Quotes
"They are clever and passionate, their intellects are restless, they want too much (whatever that is)."
"In literary dialogues between man and devil, from Marlowe to Thomas Mann and Mikhail Bulgakov, the devil has the best lines, and most of the human wit."
"It is still potent in a world where human beings have become afraid, both of what human ingenuity can achieve, and of the limited ability of human mind and moral orders to control those achievements responsibly."
"Faust’s traditional sin is ‘curiosity’ – the desire for knowledge, including the knowledge of good and evil, Adam’s sin."
"It is a commonplace of dramatic criticism that the Romantic poets wrote bad plays because the kind of things they wanted to say were best conveyed in monologues, or dramatic monologues."
"Wordsworth and Coleridge, Tennyson and Browning wrote plays in which people described their feelings, rather than acting and being acted upon."
"The novel Elective Affinities; work on Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Travel, which is the continuation of the Apprentice Years."
"Every writer taking up a traditional myth will fight for his or her own identity against it."
"Goethe, the most receptive and impressionable of writers, was at the same time quite exceptionally self-assured."
"When imagination and all her choruses, Reason, Good Sense and Sentiment and Passion, say their lines, the Fool also says his."
"All live this life, by most unrealized, and always interesting wherever seized."
"Give me unbridled the old compulsions, deep happiness and all its complement of pain, the force of hate, the power of love, oh give me back my youth again!"
"For with the dead my wish to mix was never very strong. I love the chubby cheeks, the rosy red; on days when corpses call I don't receive. Like any cat, I like my mice alive."
"A good man, though impelled in darkness, yet Is well aware of what the right way is."
"I like to make the devil his companion To prick and work and be a mover willy-nilly."
"Alas, I’ve studied Philosophy, The Law and Physic and also, More’s the pity, Divinity With ardent effort, through and through And here I am, about as wise Today, poor fool, as I ever was."
"The true heaven of the people is here and now, Contenting big and small, a noisy glee."
"If ever I shall tell the moment: Bide here, you are so beautiful! Then you can fetter me and I’ll Go gladly to perdition that instant."
"Nature then your only tutor In power your soul will lift and open One spirit speaking with another."
"What you don’t feel, you’ll never get by chasing Unless it presses from the soul And with a primal deed of zestful pleasing Puts every listener’s heart in thrall."
"But let us not wither the good and beauty Of this hour by the mind’s sad cast."
"Reason begins to speak again And hope again begins to flower."
"I am a part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."
"But one thing bothers me. Since time is short and art is long, you should, I think, take some instruction."
"I feel it: I have snatched in vain all the valuables of the human mind to me and at the end when I sit down, no force in me that’s new can be divined."
"The way you look at things, my friend, is just the usual way they get looked at."
"If I can get six horses with my cash, do I not own their energy?"
"The man who cogitates is like a beast on dry heathland led round and round by evil sprites."
"What a place of torment this is, to be sure!"
"I’ll drag him through a wild existence, through flat want of significance."
"He’ll beg for slaking and will get it never."
"I am not by one hair’s breadth higher, to things that have no end I am no nearer."
"Use your time, it hurries off so fast. But organization makes it last."
"Stick – all in all – to words. Then through the safest gate you’ll pass into the Temple of Certainty."
"All theory, my friend, is grey. Life’s golden tree is green."
"No doubt. But don’t torment yourself too hard. For where a meaning’s wanting there precisely, up pops, on cue, a word."
"And yet the truth is on that score, Confess, you never did know more Than you do about Herr Schwerdtlein’s being dead."
"It’s easy being in the right If all you hear is your own voice."
"One look from you, one word outbids the sum Of all this world’s wisdom."
"My poor talk, I’m well aware, There’s little for a man as travelled as you are."
"Dear girl, believe me, what they call clever Is often more dumb conceit."
"That the meek, the lowly, whom the greatest Of loving Nature’s gifts are given to –"
"The power to feel her and enjoy her, not Only to visit her in cold astonishment."
"He loves me – not – he loves me – not… He loves me!"
"To give the self up utterly and feel Bliss that must last for ever."
"I have no peace, But only pain, I’ll never have peace, Ever again."
"Only for him Do I look out, For no one else Do I leave the house."
"Names are a noise and smoke Obscuring heaven’s flame."
"You are a whore so go and do At least the whore’s thing well."
"Does he not comprehend and hold in place You, me, himself?"
"What’s done, unfortunately, is done And it will go the only way it can."
"The race of devils will not play by the book, Clever as we are, in Tegel there’s still a spook."
"Imagination in my mind Is tyrannous tonight."
"Doubt and cavil go with the Devil. I’m quite at home here."
"O infinite Spirit, transform this worm back into its dog-shape, back the way he liked to come at nights and dance in front of me."
"Why do you humans associate with us if you can’t carry it through? You wish to fly – but have no head for heights?"
"You come to fetch me? It is only midnight. Have mercy, let me be."
"I am so young, still so young, And must I die already?"
"What have I done to you? Have pity. Don’t let me plead in vain."
"A loving man lies here who will undo The misery fettering you."
"The multitude presses, silently. Too many there are In the streets and the square."