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Faust Quotes

Browse 60 quotes about Faust.

Faust Quotes

“Let us imagine a rising generation with this fearless gaze, with this heroic attraction to what is monstrous, let us imagine the bold stride of these dragon-killers, the proud recklessness with which they turn their backs on all the enfeebled doctrines of scientific optimism so that they may 'live resolutely', wholly and fully; would not the tragic man of this culture, given that he has trained himself for what is grave and terrifying, be bound to desire a new form of art, the art of metaphysical solace, in fact to desire tragedy as his very own Helen, and to call out along with Faust: And shall I not, with all my longing's vigour, Draw into life that peerless, lovely figure?”

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Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“The Promethean = the Faustian = the eternal seeker = the eternal wanderer = the eternal quester. The Promethean is a romantic, a striving figure, an outsider, a non-conformist. He’s often alone. Conventional society has rejected him and, more importantly, he has rejected conventional society. The HyperHuman plays the Great Game – the God Game. His objective it to transform himself into God ... to undergo the ultimate metamorphosis. The HyperHuman is a new kind of knight, a knight of the mind. He seeks to merit the title of “knight” and lives courageously by a noble code. His life has total focus and purpose. His mind is always focused on the Holy Grail. The search for the Grail is the symbol of the HyperHuman’s search for heaven, for God, to become God.”

GodRomanticWandererHoly GrailOutsiderSupermanFaustTruth SeekerHyper HumanPromethean
Book:HyperHumanity
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“... Faustus ... dared to confirm he had advanced beyond the level of a scarlet sinner — he was a conscious follower of the Prince of Darkness. The fact he could publicly project an Antichrist image with pride, having no fear of reprisal, and his seeming diabolical art of escaping all punishment when others who were considered heretics had burned at the stake for less, would certainly signal that an unnatural individual walked in their midst. It is true in many respects he assumed the role of the charlatan, yet how apropos, considering his willingness to follow his ‘brother-in-law’ known as the Father of Lies and deception.”

EvilDevilEvil PeopleAntichristFaustEvil MenFaustusFaustianFaust Legend
Book:Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World
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“Mephistopheles' contentious, often ambiguous relationship to Faustus is a reference to tantra just as it is to alchemy. It resembles the shifting tactics of a guru who varies his approach to his pupil in order to dissolve his resistances and prepare him for wider states of consciousness. Both Faustus and the tantric aspirant stimulate and indulge their senses under the guidance of their teachers who encourage them to have sexual encounters with women in their dreams. Both work with magical diagrams or yantras, exhibit extraordinary will, "fly" on visionary journeys, acquire powers of teleportation, invisibility, prophecy, and healing, and have ritual intercourse with women whom they visualize as goddesses. The tantrist [sic] is said to become omniscient as a result of his sacred "marriage," and Faustus produces an omniscient child in his union with the visualized Helen, or Sophia.”

GuruAlchemyMagickTantraGnosticismFaust2007Faustian Legend
Book:The Gnostic Faustus
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“A thought expressed is a falsehood." In poetry what is not said and yet gleams through the beauty of the symbol, works more powerfully on the heart than that which is expressed in words. Symbolism makes the very style, the very artistic substance of poetry inspired, transparent, illuminated throughout like the delicate walls of an alabaster amphora in which a flame is ignited. Characters can also serve as symbols. Sancho Panza and Faust, Don Quixote and Hamlet, Don Juan and Falstaff, according to the words of Goethe, are "schwankende Gestalten." Apparitions which haunt mankind, sometimes repeatedly from age to age, accompany mankind from generation to generation. It is impossible to communicate in any words whatsoever the idea of such symbolic characters, for words only define and restrict thought, but symbols express the unrestricted aspect of truth. Moreover we cannot be satisfied with a vulgar, photographic exactness of experimental photoqraphv. We demand and have premonition of, according to the allusions of Flaubert, Maupassant, Turgenev, Ibsen, new and as yet undisclosed worlds of impressionability. This thirst for the unexperienced, in pursuit of elusive nuances, of the dark and unconscious in our sensibility, is the characteristic feature of the coming ideal poetry. Earlier Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe said that the beautiful must somewhat amaze, must seem unexpected and extraordinary. French critics more or less successfully named this feature - impressionism. Such are the three major elements of the new art: a mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability. No positivistic conclusions, no utilitarian computation, but only a creative faith in something infinite and immortal can ignite the soul of man, create heroes, martyrs and prophets... People have need of faith, they need inspiration, they crave a holy madness in their heroes and martyrs. ("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")”

DecadenceDon JuanHamletImpressionismFaustBaudelaireGoetheIbsenDon QuixoteEdgar Allan PoeFalstaffDecadentsSymbolistMaupassantTurgenevFlaubertSancho Panza
Book:Silver Age of Russian Culture
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“Like Hamlet, Goethe's Faust offers a wide panorama of scenes from the vulgar to the sublime, with passages of wondrous poetry that can be sensed even through the veil of translation. And it also preserves the iridescence of its modern theme. From it Oswald Spengler christened our Western culture 'Faustian,' and others too have found it an unexcelled metaphor for the infinitely aspiring always dissatisfied modern self. Goethe himself was wary of simple explanations. When his friends accused him of incompetence in metaphysics, he replied. 'I, being an artist, regard this as of little moment. Indeed, I prefer that the principle from which and through which I work should be hidden from me.”

Literary CriticismHamletFaustGoetheFaustianOswald SpenglerGerman Poet
Book:The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
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“MARGRETHE [...] Glaubst du an Gott? FAUST Mein Liebchen, wer darf sagen: Ich glaub' an Gott? Magst Priester oder Weise fragen, Und ihre Antwort scheint nur Spott Über den Frager zu sein. MARGRETHE So glaubst du nicht? FAUST Mißhör' mich nicht, du holdes Angesicht! Wer darf ihn nennen? Und wer bekennen: Ich glaub' ihn? Wer empfinden Und sich unterwinden Zu sagen: Ich glaub' ihn nicht? Der Allumfasser, Der Allerhalter, Fasst und erhält er nicht Dich, mich, sich selbst? Wölbt sich der Himmel nicht da droben? Liegt die Erde nicht hierunten fest? Und steigen freundlich blickend Ewige Sterne nicht herauf? Schau' ich nicht Aug' in Auge dir, Und drängt nicht alles Nach Haupt und Herzen dir, Und webt in ewigem Geheimnis Unsichtbar sichtbar neben dir? Erfüll' davon dein Herz, so groß es ist, Und wenn du ganz in dem Gefühle selig bist, Nenn' es dann, wie du willst, Nenn's Glück! Herz! Liebe! Gott! Ich habe keinen Namen Dafür! Gefühl ist alles; Name ist Schall und Rauch, Umnebelnd Himmelsglut. MARGRETHE Das ist alles recht schön und gut; Ungefähr sagt das der Pfarrer auch, Nur mit ein bisschen andern Worten. FAUST Es sagen's aller Orten Alle Herzen unter dem himmlischen Tage, Jedes in seiner Sprache; Warum nicht ich in der meinen?”

ReligionFaustGoetheGott
Book:Faust, Erster Teil
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“The adjective “Faustian” describes the insatiable striving for the unattainable, the impossible, for all knowledge and all power, for the infinite and perfect. The Faustian human will bow to no tyrant God. He will worship no God. He will never be a slave, servant or serf. He will have no lord and no master. Religious people regard Faust as having “sold his soul to the Devil”. In fact, Faust liberated his soul from the Devil (the Abrahamic God) so that he himself could become a God.”

GodReligionDevilMasterSelf ActualizationFaustFaustian Pact
Book:The Intelligence Wars: Logos Versus Mythos
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“In 1530 [H. C. Agrippa] published at Antwerp a book, On the Vanity of Sciences and Arts, a curious, nihilistic work, whose central thesis is that knowledge only brings man to disillusionment and recognition of how little he knows. It reads like an anticipation of Faust’s speech in Act I of Goethe’s play. The only worthwhile study, says Agrippa, is theology and scripture. He was undoubtedly sincere.”

KnowledgeDisillusionmentFaustGoetheAgrippaVanity Of Human Affairs
Book:The Occult
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“Faustus, who embraced evil and shunned righteousness, became the foremost symbol of the misuse of free will, that sublime gift from God with its inherent opportunity to choose virtue and reject iniquity. “What shall a man gain if he has the whole world and lose his soul,” (Matt. 16: v. 26) - but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life of fleeting pleasure with no true peace? This was the blackest and most captivating tragedy of all, few could have remained indifferent to the growing intrigue of this individual who apparently shook hands with the devil and freely chose to descend to the molten, sulphuric chasm of Hell for all eternity for so little in exchange. It is a drama that continues to fascinate today as powerfully as when Faustus first disseminated his infamous card in the Heidelberg locale to the scandal of his generation. In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.”

ChristianEvilHeavenHellCatholicGoodGood And EvilFree WillThought ProvokingDamnationFaustGoetheEvil MenFaustusMarloweFaustianFaust Legend
Book:Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Vol. 1
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“Life is more than thought: what a man feels, and what his senses awaken in him, are more indispensable to his life's fullness than subsequent reflection on their significance. Both Stirner and Nietzsche have elaborated Faust's opening speech in which he bemoans his wasted years in academia: this speech is Goethe's own impeachment of Kant and Hegel . Philosophy proceeds always under the risk of making a fetish of thinking.”

ThinkingMenFeelsYearsPhilosophyLife IsRiskSpeechReflectionSensesOpeningSignificanceIndispensableFullnessAcademiaFetishHegelImpeachmentFaust
Author:John Carroll
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“You received the power, the authority, and the sacred duty to minister the moment you were ordained to the priesthood. President James E. Faust taught, “Priesthood is the authority delegated to man to minister in the name of God. “The Aaronic Priesthood holds the keys of the ministering of angels. As you love His children, Heavenly Father will guide you, and angels will assist you. You will be given power to bless lives and rescue souls.”

MenChildrenSoulMomentsFatherNamesGivenPresidentTaughtDutyKeysAuthorityAngelSacredGuidesMinistersHeavenlyBlessRescueHeavenly FatherPriesthoodFaust
Author:David L. Beck
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“Upon the publication of Goethe's epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the rule by which all other Faust adaptations were measured. Goethe had eclipsed the earlier legends and became the undisputed authority on the subject of Faust in the eyes of the new Romantic generation. To deviate from his path would be nothing short of blasphemy.”

Would BeEyePathGenerationsSubjectsDramaAuthorityAppreciateLegendsEpicAdaptationPublicationBlasphemyEntiretyDeviateFaustZenithUndisputed
Author:E. A. Bucchianeri
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“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.”

KindReadingBitsTechnologyCenturyApproachOppositesHarderHanging OutWidows19th CenturyIphoneReedsToddlerFaustComplete Opposites
Author:Rufus Wainwright
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“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!”

IfsWritingHas BeensFeelingsLightHoursDarkMy OwnRoomsSuccessfulTeachingHavensSticksFingersPrisonerExposedClothingsPlatesElderlyDark RoomFaustBastille
Author:Bret Harte
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“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.”

MindLooksLongArtHandsLyingImaginationPlanetsSkillsEmbraceMortalsVainTouchedHorizonInfinityMasteryComprehensionFaust
Author:Susan Kay
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