"Faust" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wolmar's active, peaceful, frugal, sunny household. The influence of this was immense.[55] It may be that the overstrained scene where Saint Preux waits for Julie in her room, suggested the far lovelier passage of Faust in the chamber of the hapless Margaret. But we may, at least, be sure that Werther (1774) would not have found Charlotte cutting bread and butter, if Saint Preux had not gone to see Julie take cream and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... as to individuals that a period devoted to recovery from internal disorders is followed by a time of great productive and expansive power. The introspective epoch gives place to one of practical achievement. Faust gives up his barren speculations and feels his way from thought to action. From "In the beginning was the Word" he wins his way onward through "the Thought" and "the Might," until he rewrites the dictum "In the beginning ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... up on "Faust" three-quarters of an hour late. This was not bad, considering all things. Although the house was sold out, there was hardly any audience, and only a harp and two violins in the orchestra. But discipline ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... wrote four of his greatest dramas, "Iphigenie in Tauris," "Torquato Tasso," "Egmont," and the first part of "Faust." Later he wrote his great prose work, "Die Wahlverwandtschaften," a quasi-physiological romance; "Wilhelm Meister's Lehr und Wander Jahre," a narrative interspersed with some of Goethe's finest lyrics, such as the songs of Mignon and of the old harper, as well ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... teeth, and smiting the senseless iron with a vindictive swoop of his cane. I fancy his face at this moment had some of the peculiar lines and corrugations which we observe in that of Retzsch's Mephistopheles, when he gripes the arm of Faust to drag him from Margaret's cell. So he stood behind his iron grating, glaring and grinning defiance into the darkness, with his fingers ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the sole theme of poetry amongst these nations. Experience may confirm this assertion, if we consider the productions of the greatest poets who have appeared since the world has been turned to democracy. The authors of our age who have so admirably delineated the features of Faust, Childe Harold, Rene, and Jocelyn, did not seek to record the actions of an individual, but to enlarge and to throw light on some of the obscurer recesses of the human heart. Such are the poems of democracy. The principle of equality does not then destroy all ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Reykjavik: they had then very fine Icelandic scenery, and went home in ecstasy over the performance, feeling that I had seen the brightest and strongest play in the world. Of my reading I thought "Macbeth," "Gretchen im Carcer" ("Faust" I), and "Oidipous Tyrannos" finest and fullest. While at Reykjavik I wrote "Nyarsnottin" (New Year's Night) and got it acted at the college, with the greatest possible success. That drama formed a turning point in my life—as the author of it I went to Copenhagen ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... in the afternoon. There they write with golden pens on silver slates, and instead of ABC-books they have story-books with gay-coloured pictures. They do not learn geography, for of what use in Heaven is earth-knowledge; and in eternity one doesn't know the multiplication table at all. Dr. Faust is the angel-school teacher. On earth he was an A.M., and on account of a certain event which does not belong here, he is obliged to keep school in Heaven three thousand years more before the long vacation begins for him. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons the little ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... German, that, with all that curious science, the German would have thought nothing more was needed. The name of Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost no artistic character at all. But Leonardo will never work till the happy moment ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... horrible aspect of the enemy, they commenced a new life. This thought comes out strongly in Y Bardd Cwsg. The poet introduces one of the fallen angels as appearing to act the part given to the Devil, in the play of Faust, when it was being performed at Shrewsbury, and this appearance drove the frequenters of the theatre from their pleasures to their prayers. His ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... there, and, with all due respect to Mr. Grau, I must admit that we saw the most perfect production of "Faust" in Vienna than I ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... of Faustus and Helen are readily allegorized into the passion of the Renaissance for classical beauty, the passion to which all that is not beauty seemed very dross. This is the idea of the second part of "Faust," in which Helen once more became, as she prophesied in the Iliad, a song in the mouths of later men. Almost her latest apparition in English poetry, is in the "Hellenics" of Landor. The sweetness of the character of Helen; the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... of the world and of life, the author always heard a voice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of things at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced, smiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that terrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... all the great legendary figures of the middle ages I detected the feature of divine possession, especially in the two who had completely fascinated the poets of the nineteenth century, Don Juan and Faust. The first was the symbol of magic power over women, the second of the thirst for knowledge giving dominion over humanity and Nature. Among my comrades, in Vilsing, even in the hunch-backed fellow with the unsuccessful ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the spirited translations of Spanish ballads published in 1823 by John Gibson Lockhart; (3) a selection of stories from the "Gesta Romanorum;" and (4) the old translation of the original story of Faustus, on which Marlowe founded his play, and which is the first source of the Faust legend in literature. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... into an old arm-chair, by the side of the bed—like Faust in Marguerite's room—lifting the curtains with as much precaution as if Louise reposed beneath. You are going to laugh at me, I know, dear Roger, but I assure you, I have never been able to gaze upon a young girl's ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... its parts, the ideal in the real, the universal in the particular, as the poet's and thinker's highest gift. He called it an apercu, "a revelation springing up in the inner man that gives him a hint of his likeness to God." It is this gift which Faust craves and Mephisto sneers ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What a great record is yours, and were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your poisonous blossoms. The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children of the nineteenth century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of your deadly delight all hope of repentance is vain. Flowers, beautiful in your sublime decay, I press you to my lips; these northern solitudes, far from the rank Parisian ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... supper, the old doctor sat in the cheerful kitchen of the Perkins home and watched Martha quickly and deftly clearing away the dishes. Humming to himself an air from "Faust" no one would have thought that he was deliberately contemplating doing a match-making turn, but certain it is that his brain was busy devising means of suggesting to Arthur what a splendid girl Martha was. There was this difference between Dr. Emory and Pearl Watson as match-makers,—Pearl ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... Goethe concludes his "Faust" with the words "may be continued;" and our wanderings in the churchyard may be continued too. If any of my friends, or my non-friends, go on too fast for me, I go out to my favourite spot and select ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... year before, the flower of his profession had assembled to do him honor. Once between the courses, when he rose, as was his habit, to walk about, he wandered into the drawing-room, and, seating himself at the orchestrelle, began to play the beautiful "Flower Song" from Faust. It was a thing I had not seen him do before, and I never saw ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Browning contemptible futilities. Yet a different way of treating legend lay nearer to the spirit of contemporary poetry. Goethe had not long before evolved his Mephistopheles from the "attendant spirit" attached by that same sixteenth century to the Paracelsus of Protestantism, Faust; Tennyson was already meditating a scene full of the enchantment of the Arthurian sword Excalibur. Browning's peremptory rejection of such springs of poetry marks one of his limitations as a poet. Much of the finest poetry of Faust, as, in a lower degree, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Hayward's Prose Translation; Eighth Edition. Hayward quotes from Goethe himself, that, though of course much of a Poem must evaporate in a Prose Translation, yet the Essence must remain. Well; I distinguish as little of that Essential Poetry in the Faust now as when I first read it—longer ago than 'Le Bon Pasteur,' and in other subsequent Attempts. I was tempted to think this was some Defect—great Defect—in myself: but a Note at the end of the Volume informs me that a much greater Wit than I was in the same plight—even ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... band-master; and then it was assured that the much advertised composer was a joking American masquerading as a Slav, possibly the vender of some new religious cure born in the fanatical bake-ovens of Western America. "Faust" alternated with "Les Huguenots" at the Opera, Pilsner beer was on tap at the Cafe Monferino—why worry over exotic stories told of this visitor's abnormal musical powers? And little did anyone surmise that he had just given a symphonic setting to Lingwood Evans's insurrectionary poem with ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... not, of course, help noticing, to his alarm, the effect upon me of this kind of conversation, which I was far too young to appreciate. Although it annoyed me one day, when I wanted to begin reading Goethe's Faust, to hear him say quietly that I was too young to understand it, yet, according to my thinking, his other conversations about our own great poets, and even about Shakespeare and Dante, had made me so familiar with these sublime ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the anima mundi, the mother of all things and their grave, in which some had desired to lose themselves, and others had become indifferent to the distinctions of good and evil. It would come, sometimes, like the sign of the macrocosm to Faust in his cell: the network of man and nature was seen to be pervaded by a common, universal life: a new, bold thought lifted him above the furrow, above the green turf of the Westmoreland churchyard, to a world altogether different in its vagueness ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... brass molds and make them of more durable metal. But alas, such an innovation was costly and his money had given out. Therefore, much as he dreaded to part with his secret, he was forced to take into partnership a rich metal worker by the name of John Faust." ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... Evadne placidly sleeping in the high-backed chair, with her hat in her hand held up so as to conceal the lower part of her face; "Are visions about? Is that one that I see there before me? If I were Faust, I should love such a Marguerite. I wish she would let her hat drop. I want to see the lower part of her face. The upper part satisfies me. It is fine. The balance of brow and frontal development ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... table for his copy of "Faust." It had become his habit to pick it up when he did not care to sit face to face with his own thoughts. It seemed to hold some word for everything in life. Its universality made it a ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... admirable designs which accompany the Faust, we have always been much struck by one which represents the wizard and the tempter riding at full speed. The demon sits on his furious horse as heedlessly as if he were reposing on a chair. That he should keep his saddle in such ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scenes, waiting for his recognition. There was the great jewel-store where Edith had taken him so often to consult his taste whenever a friend of hers was to be married. It was there that they had had an amicable quarrel over that bronze statue of Faust which she had found beautiful, while he, with a rudeness which seemed now quite incomprehensible, had insisted that it was not. And when he had failed to convince her, she had given him her hand in token of reconciliation—and Edith had a wonderful way of giving her hand, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... stem, and so strongly resembling her sister in so many points, they are nearly unknown. Almost the only poetical work of the greatest Poet that the world has seen for ages, that is really and generally read in England, is Faust, the translations of which are almost endless; while no single person has as yet appeared to attempt to give, in an English dress, in any collective or systematic manner, those smaller productions of the genius of Goethe ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... black art, as for instance Bodinus, whose De Magorum Daemonomania was translated by Fischart (Strassburg, 1591), repeat about Zoroaster all the fables found in classical or patristic writers. So the Iranian sage figures prominently also in the Faust-legend. He is the prince of magicians whose book Faust studies so diligently that he is called a second Zoroastris.[63] This book passes into the hands of Faust's pupil Christoph Wagner, who uses it as diligently as ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... FAUST. If anybody calls, say I am out; I must have time to see how I will act. As to the form in which I shall be written, I must decide whether in prose or verse. My thoughts I'll bend. Give me at once the Times: Walkley I always find inspiriting— ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... We recognize this in the ease of the poet. Although Goethe has been reproached for his lack of sympathy with the liberalizing movement of his day (as if his novels were quieting social influences), it is felt by this generation that the author of "Faust" needs no apology that he did not spend his energies in the effervescing politics of the German states. I mean, that while we may like or dislike the man for his sympathy or want of sympathy, we concede to the author the right of his ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... feel quite certain whether any of the verse translations are not my own. The little book makes of course no pretence to be a contribution to critical or biographical literature. It is meant especially for those who wish to know something more about the story of Faust and about Goethe's play, and who, because their knowledge of German does not suffice or for other reasons, are unable to study the subject in any ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... think. He offered any price if I could cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him. He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful body ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Why, I thought you just said, Laura, that you had imagined love would be like Juliet and like that girl in 'Faust'—that it was going to shake ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... "Ruba'iyat," which the Head said was a poem not yet come to its own; there were hundreds of volumes of verse—-Crashaw; Dryden; Alexander Smith; L. E. L.; Lydia Sigourney; Fletcher and a purple island; Donne; Marlowe's "Faust "; and—this made McTurk (to whom Beetle conveyed it) sheer drunk for three days—Ossian; "The Earthly Paradise"; "Atalanta in Calydon"; and Rossetti—to name only a few. Then the Head, drifting in under pretense of playing censor to the paper, would ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... said Quinny, who would have stated the other side quite as imperiously. "What you cite is a variation of quite another theme, the Faust theme—old age longing for youth, the man who has loved longing for the love of his youth, which is youth itself. The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the most destructive and, therefore, the most ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... from that referred to in Chapter IV. See Appendix II.). Scene 1st, St. Firmin arriving; scene 2nd, St. Firmin preaching; scene 3rd, St. Firmin baptizing; and scene 4th, St. Firmin beheaded, by an executioner with very red legs, and an attendant dog of the character of the dog in 'Faust,' of whom we may have more ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... would not have advised you to undertake Faust. It is mad stuff, and goes quite beyond all ordinary feeling. But since you have done it of your own accord, without asking my advice, you will see how you will get through. Faust is so strange an individual that only few can sympathize with his internal condition. Then the character of Mephistopheles is, on account of his irony, and also because he is a living result of an extensive acquaintance with the world, also very difficult. But ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... The "Faust" of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge, calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of the Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that tremendous experiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit of his ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... Faust and Don Juan, which was immediately associated with Alexander's death—even the black dog running about excitedly in St. Peter's is included—shows what was the opinion of Alexander's contemporaries regarding the terrible life of the Borgia, and the extraordinary success which followed him all ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... confine ourselves to music, he was not only a good singer and violoncellist, but also a composer; and in composition he did not confine himself to songs, duets, part-songs, and the like, but undertook the ambitious and arduous task of writing music to the first part of Goethe's Faust. By desire of the Court the Berlin Singakademie used to bring this work to a hearing once every year, and they gave a performance of it even as late as 1879. An enthusiastic critic once pronounced it to be among modern works one of those that evince ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... music, fifteen concertos for violin and orchestra, nine symphonies, four oratories, of which "The Last Judgment" is perhaps the best, ten operas, many concert overtures, etc.—in all more than 200 works, many of them of large dimensions. His best operas are "Jessonda" (1823), "Faust" (1818), "The Alchemist" (1832) and "The Crusaders" (1845). His orchestral works are richly instrumented, and the coloring is sweet and mellow, yet at ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... fling his mind upon the barrier—and stand there with the flashing bayonet of his pride. Other men who broke the laws of justice and charity lied to all the world. He at any rate would not lie to himself. He was more than Byronic now: not the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the philosophical rebel, Faust; but a new psychological rebel of his own century—defying the sentimental a priori forms of ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... match the courses. So instead of sherry with the soup, they ordered the intermezzo from "Cavalleria Rusticana." With the fish we had the overture to "William Tell." With the entrecote we had a pot-pourri from "Faust." With the fowl we had "Demon and Tamar," the Russian opera. With the rest we began on Wagner and worked up to that thrilling "Tannhaeuser" overture, until I was ready to go home a nervous wreck from German music, ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... he said, bitterly, "every time I see this play of 'Faust,' and hear Edouard De Reszke's deep bass speak for His Majesty the Devil, that His Majesty really made this world. I'd know it but for the paradox of such divine perfection before my eyes in the living reality of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... A Faust-like legend might spring from him: he had a devil. He was the leader of a host, the hope of a party, venerated by his followers, well hated by his enemies, respected by the intellectual chiefs of his time, in the pride of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the hostess, is accustomed to draw around her a circle of talent, and beauty, rarely equalled anywhere. Her evenings come nearer approaching the dignity of a salon than any occasion, except, perhaps, a Tony Faust and Marguerite reception ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... male observer might marvel at Bessie's elation over the prospect of sitting in Mrs. Anstruthers Leason's box at the performance of "Faust" given by the French Opera Company on tour. But no candid woman will. It could be explained partly by the natural desire to associate with entertaining, well-dressed folk, who were generally considered to be "the best," "the leaders" of local society. Sitting there in the stuffy box, which was ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... perceive in this process itself its highest and last cause, in doing which we should be obliged again to deny order and plan in this process, to reject the category of lower and higher and the acknowledgment of a striving towards an end in these developments, and after having climbed to that Faust-height of investigation and knowledge, to throw ourselves in spiritual suicide back into the night and barbarism of chaos, or of a rigid mechanism to which all development, all life, all spiritual and ethical tasks, are but appearance; or we should have to treat the idea of development ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... my "Faust" pretty well, and, after reading this word of might, I was minded to chant the well-known stanzas ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book, craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive and vigorous age, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... wires which set all the other puppets in motion,—Mr. Mephistopheles himself. Marguerite, studied, refined, unimpassioned in the pretty Yankee girl,—simple, warm, outpouring in the sympathetic German woman,—and Faust, gallant, ardent, winning in the bright-eyed Italian,—thoughtful, tender, fervent in the intelligent German,—are background figures in the picture your memory paints; while the ubiquitous, sneering, specious, cunning, tempting, leering, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... dramatic poets are endowed with the power of creating beings who seem to act and speak with perfect independence, so that the poet is nothing more than the relator of what takes place. When Goethe had conceived Faust and Margarete, Mephistopheles and Wagner, they moved and had their being without any exercise of his will. But in the peculiar power which Petronius exercises, in its application to every scene, to every ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... When Faust claims affinity with the Erdgeist, the spirit tells him to seek affinities with beings which he can comprehend. The commandment which forbade the representation of God in a bodily form, forbids the poet equally to make God describe ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... phenomena of light, heat, and electricity are seen to be due to the rhythmical vibration of atoms. There is thus no such thing as rest: from the planet to the ultimate particle, all things are endlessly moving: and the mystic song of the Earth-Spirit in "Faust" is recognized as the expression of the sublimest ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... every great imaginative work of the Western world! Thus in 1855 we find him noting the following projects, to be carried out in ten years' time:—illustrations of schylus, Lucan, Ovid, Shakespeare, Goethe (Faust), Lamartine (Mditations), Racine, Corneille, Schiller, Boccaccio, Montaigne, Plutarch's Lives—these names among others. The jottings in question were written for a friend who had undertaken to ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in the prosecution of their purpose, and more fortunate in awakening popularity and admiration among their contemporaries. In the instances of Apollonius Tyanaeus and others among the ancients, and of Cornelius Agrippa, Roger Bacon and Faust among the moderns, we are acquainted with many biographical particulars of their lives, and can trace with some degree of accuracy, their peculiarities of disposition, and observe how they were led gradually from one study and one mode of action to another. But the magicians of the East, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... performance. More than twenty years. When I was up at Oxford, and for some years afterwards, I was a great theatre-goer. Never used to miss a first night at the Gaiety. Those were the days of Nellie Farren and Kate Vaughan. Florence St. John, too. How excellent she was in Faust Up To Date! But we missed Nellie Farren. Meyer Lutz was the Gaiety composer then. But a good deal of water has flowed under the bridge since those days. I don't suppose you have ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... against the introduction of the supernatural into life. The peau de chagrin is the modern substitute for the old-fashioned parchment on which contracts were signed with the devil. M. Valentin, its possessor, is a Faust of the boulevards; but our prejudices are softened by the circumstance that the peau de chagrin has a false air of scientific authenticity. It is discovered by a gentleman who spends a spare half-hour before committing suicide in an old curiosity shop, which occupies a sort of middle ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... The next day he was to play to Goethe, and at an early hour of the morning he was sauntering in the grounds, awaiting the poet's arrival, and feasting his eyes upon the scenes which were the accustomed haunts of the author of 'Faust'; and then, selecting a sunny spot, he sat down to write a long letter home, full of description of the events ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... 1845). The expansion of population into the interior and the coming of the Germans and Scotch-Irish are well described in Channing, II, chap, XIV; and Greene, chap. XIV. For a full treatment of the German migration see Faust, The German Element in the United States (2 vols. 1909); for the Scotch-Irish see Hanna, The Scotch-Irish (2 vols. 1902). The best account of the characteristics of frontier society in this period is in Turner, The Old West, in Proceedings of the Wisconsin ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... to make himself an appropriate graduate of such a university of morals, and devoted himself to wine, women, and debts, with a small proportion of song. He belonged to a society of young men, who called themselves by the gentle name of "Faust's Ride to Hell." He now began also the composition of an opera, "Sylvana." This brought him into acquaintance with operatic people, and he fell under the charm of that "coquettish little serpent ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... warlike instruments, and mystic-looking symbols—of chains of interlaced knots and complex zigzags, all so crowding on each other that the tired eye feels as if it had run through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony or Faust Sabbaths. When this field of investigation and speculation is surveyed in all its affluence, one is not surprised to find that it has been taken in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the skilful appliance of a jingling jargon of Asiatic, Celtic, and classical phraseology, make nonsense sound ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... immediately preceding the war, but his spirit had permeated the political thought of a whole generation. To the living influence of Nietzsche there is a host of witnesses. Gerhart Hauptmann, near the beginning of the war, averred that the cultured German soldier carried "Zarathustra," along with "Faust" and the Bible, in his knapsack. Nor was this an idle guess. Professor Deissmann, of Berlin, tells us that he enquired into the matter, and learned from book-sellers that the books most in demand among soldiers were the New Testament, "Faust" and "Zarathustra." O.A.H. Schmitz, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... "Ah, there it is—one never knows—one never says, This is the moment! because, however good it is, it always seems the door to a better one beyond. Faust never said it till the end, when he'd nothing left of all he began by thinking worth while; and then, with what a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... is true," exclaimed Daru, "the muse of Goethe is that of youth, beauty, and grace. Germany justly calls him her greatest poet, and does homage with well-grounded enthusiasm to the author of 'Faust,' of 'Werther,' and ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... The 'Faust' of Goethe, tired of the barren round of earthly knowledge, calls magic to his aid. He desires, first, to see the spirit of the Macrocosmos, but his heart fails him before he ventures that tremendous experiment, and he summons before him, instead, the spirit of his own race. There he feels ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... me read to her the scene between Faust and Mephistopheles, in which the latter appears as a wandering scholar. Her glance hung on me with ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... emotions and feelings; in ringing the changes on these, till vitality fails, disillusion or satiety supervenes, and old age or death closes the play. Often the appetite remains, when vitality fails, and Faust rejuvenated, would run the same gauntlet again. The pity of it is that thousands of these victims of either satiety or Tantalus seem never to dream that there are other values, or anything else, or better, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... concludes his Faust with the words, "may be continued;" so might our wanderings in the churchyard be continued. I come here often, and if any of my friends, or those who are not my friends, are too much for me, I go out and choose a plot of ground in which to bury him or her. Then ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Erlangen, after the completion of his "cure," Sand read Faust far the first time. At first he was amazed at that work, which seemed to him an orgy of genius; then, when he had entirely finished it, he reconsidered his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... thing everybody in Haarlem believes—and that is, that Guttenberg, and Werner, and Faust, in pretending that they were the discoverers of the art of printing, were egregious specimens of the art of lying; for that that noble discovery was made by no human being save and except an illustrious citizen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to wade in tepid mud. Fordham has routed out a German to read Faust with, and that puts Evelyn into a sweet temper. They go on expeditions, and do sketching and botany, which amuses Armine; but they get up some fun over the queer people, and do them for the mag., but it is all deadly lively, not that I saw much of it, for we only got down from Schwarenbach ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than four-score years. And Theophrastus, at three-score and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men; Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past. These are indeed exceptions; but they show How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow Into the Arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives. For age is opportunity ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... fledged undergraduate then, I had many friends and the future smiled at me. I was immensely proud of the first down on my upper lip and my little college cap, and I remember as if it were to-day, the evening when Fritz, Phil and myself went to hear this opera. We had heard 'Faust' some years before and were great admirers of Gounod's genius. But Romeo beat all our expectations. The music roused our wildest enthusiasm. Now both my friends are dead. Fritz, who was ambitious, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Bulgars would not have attacked us in this war if we had given Macedonia to them, although it is not certain, because the frontiers of their ambitions are in Constantinople, Salonica and on the Adriatic. Still Serbia could not barter her soul like Faust with Mephistopheles. Five hundred years ago the Serbs and Greeks defended Macedonia from the Turkish invasion. In 1912 it was Serbia with Greece again who liberated Macedonia from the Turkish yoke. Bulgaria never defended Macedonia from the Turks. Her first fighting for Macedonia ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... North," may seem a long step. But the pianolist can travel with seven league boots. Grieg's most widely known compositions are four of the pieces of incidental music which he wrote to Ibsen's drama "Peer Gynt." Peer Gynt is the Faust of Norwegian literature. Without attempting here to follow up this parallel, it may be said that he is a curious combination of ne'er-do-well, dreamer and philosopher, with a pronounced streak of impishness running through his character and giving a touch of the extravagant and grotesque to ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... irresistibly, she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light in the darkness, like the beacon of a refuge and a shelter. Eda had faith in her, even when Janet had lost faith in herself: she went to Eda in the same spirit that Marguerite went to church; though she, Janet, more resembled Faust, being—save in these hours of lowered vitality—of the forth-faring kind .... Unable to confess the need that drove her, she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's arms. Janet was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... know something about music, but who actually has no prejudices.) "Her voice is such a one as MARGARET must have had when she sang by her spinning-wheel, before fate threw her in the way of FAUST. And these professional musicians will tear her reputation to pieces among themselves! Why should musical people be, of all others, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... If Faust had really any hand In printing, I can understand The fate which legends more than hint;— The devil take all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... essays. Some concert overtures, including the "Faust." The Love-feast of the Apostles. Several songs. ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... to the hedges of green box, and to the whole landscape, still without leaves, an air of health and vigor, of youth and freshness. "Bathe, O disciple, thy thirsty soul in the dew of the dawn!" says Faust, to us, and he is right. The morning air breathes a new and laughing energy into veins and marrow. If every day is a repetition of life, every dawn gives signs as it were a new contract with existence. At dawn everything is fresh, light, simple, as it is for children. At dawn ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... large ship in the roads, he carried her, after an hour's work, safe out of gunshot. Only 15 men were wounded, including Lieutenant Hardy. This officer was at once put in command of the Mutine, which he had so gallantly won.] and by the Lieutenant de Vaisseau Citizen Faust. Both officers, who had been exchanged and restored at the same port, showed much presence of mind on this occasion, and on July 25 they applied to be posted at a dangerous point of attack—the beach to the south of the town, near Puerto Caballas, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... led him into any extravagances, it was of force sufficient to account for many a secret misfortune occurring to that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is the Mephistopheles who whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind Faust, I may strike a fact that will lead me ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... suggested by the overseers of the large estates and carried out by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed, that were collected there: and many a man even of high respectability did not disdain what one of his officious slave-overseers thus acquired for him as Mephistopheles acquired for Faust the lime trees of Philemon. The state of things is shown by the aggravated punishment for outrages on property committed by armed bands, which was introduced by one of the better Optimates, Marcus Lucullus, as presiding over the administration ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... felt as this truth (for so I thought it) was borne in upon me was proportioned to my previous delight. I had now but one desire, to escape, even though it were only back to what I had left. And as the Angel-Boys in 'Faust' cry out to Pater Seraphicus for release, when they can no longer bear the sights they see through his eyes, so I, in my anguish, cried, 'Let me out! Let me out!' And instantly I found myself standing again at the foot of the tower, in that land of twilight, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... with a sort of rapture. She had never heard of "Faust," but the whole was a New England version of the "Jewel Song." As Marguerite had been tempted to guilty love by jewels, so Sylvia was striving to have Rose tempted by jewels to innocent celibacy. But she was working by methods ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... world-the heart, the mind of man, How happy could we know! Faust. What can we know? Who dares bestow the infant his true name? The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave Their knowledge to the multitude—they fell! Incapable to keep their full hearts in, They, from the first of immemorial time, Were crucified or ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... along the stone terrace in the twilight. Except for that it was very quiet out there, and he could smell the heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything. Nothing left ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... translation of Schiller's AESTHETIC LETTERS, which we read together, as well as the second part of FAUST, in Gladstone Terrace, he helping me with the German. There is no keepsake I should more value than the MS. of that translation. They were the best days I ever had with him, little dreaming all would so soon be over. It needs a blow like this to convict a man of mortality ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when a human soul is either wise or happy is in that one single moment when the hour of my own shining or of the moon's beaming seems to that single soul to be past and present and future, to be at once the creation and the end of all things. Faust knew ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... London Library and the British Museum. But suddenly, just as the maids had been warned, and Lord Findon's man had been sent to look out trains, his master caught a chill, going obstinately, and in a mocking spirit, to see what 'Faust' might be like, as given at the Municipal Theatre of Versailles. There was fever, and a touch of bronchitis; nothing serious; but the doctor who had been summoned from Paris would not hear of travelling. Lord Findon hoarsely ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rather large volumes of piano works, four symphonies for grand orchestra, and a number of chamber works of different kinds, of which the quintet for piano and strings is perhaps the most successful; about 100 songs, one opera, several cantatas, a series of music pieces for "Faust," to be played in connection with ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... original, an English translation, and an Italian one; keep them all in your archives, for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, whether favorable or not, are always interesting; and this more so, as being favorable. His 'Faust' I never read, for I don't know German; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Geneva, translated most of it to me viva voce, and I was naturally much struck with it: but it was the 'Steinbach,' and the 'Yungfrau,' ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... who hands to his consort the symbols of the Regency; L., 2094, Coronation of Marie at St. Denis: the dogs are said to have been painted by Snyders; R., 2095, Apotheosis of Henry. Like the ascending Faust in Henry's portly form,— ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... aspect it is an autobiography as faithful as those of St. Augustine or of Rousseau, though transcendently purer and greater. It is a vision, like the "Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan, but written with incomparably wider knowledge and keener insight. It is a soul's history, like Goethe's "Faust," but attaining to a far loftier level of faith and thoughtfulness and moral elevation. It is a divine poem, like Milton's "Paradise Lost," dealing, as Milton does, with God and Satan, and heaven and hell, but of wider range and intenser utterance. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... my respected predecessor's fame for prudence and wisdomSed semel insanivimus omneseverybody has played the fool in their turn. It is said, my ancestor, during his apprenticeship with the descendant of old Faust, whom popular tradition hath sent to the devil under the name of Faustus, was attracted by a paltry slip of womankind, his master's daughter, called Berthathey broke rings, or went through some idiotical ceremony, as is usual on such idle occasions ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... had rendered him aggressive. As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... gathered from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:[46] and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and St. Leon, sink into common-places before the princely, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... coxcomb's telling him that "he never took fruit or sweets." "That," replied, or is said to have replied, Thackeray, "is because you are a sot, and a glutton." And the whole science of aesthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by one passage of Goethe's in the end of the second part of Faust;—the notable one that follows the song of the Lemures, when the angels enter to dispute with the fiends for the soul of Faust. They enter singing—"Pardon to sinners and life to the dust." Mephistopheles hears them first, and exclaims to his troop, "Discord I hear, and filthy ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... bread and butter—she ate the latter as if it were a peculiarly distasteful medicine in the solid—the girl tidied the room. It was the only really well-furnished room in the cottage; Nell's little chamber in the roof was as plain as Marguerite's in "Faust," and Dick's was Spartan in its Character; but a Wolfer—Mrs. Lorton was a distant, a very distant connection by a remote marriage of the noble family of that name—cannot live without a certain amount of luxury, and, as there was not enough to go round, Mrs. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Shakespeare's adaptation of it. The advice which Ulysses gives to Achilles[29] is a piece of worldly wisdom and may well be acted on by those who desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in regard to means. The first part of Goethe's "Faust" is another book which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it first when seventeen years old and have continually re-read it; and, while I fail to comprehend it wholly, and, although it does not give me the same kind of knowledge of human character that I derive from Shakespeare's ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... subjects, whose grace, beauty, harmony, and wealth of thought rank them with the finest creations of the age. The spirit of the prophets and psalmists revived in these Spanish poets. At their head stands Solomon ibn Gabirol, the Faust of Saragossa, whose poems are the first tinged with Weltschmerz, that peculiar ferment characteristic of a modern school of poets.[47] Our accounts of Gabirol's life are meagre, but they leave the clear impression that he was not a favorite of fortune, and passed ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... he cried. "Now, in the gold tiara and the spangled opera cloak," he differentiated, "you look like a picture postal card! You got Lotta Faust's blue skirt back to Levey's. But not in the white goods!" He shook his head sadly, firmly. "You look, now, like you was made up for a May-day picnic in the Bronx, and they'd picked on you to be Queen of ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... neither sea nor land." To those of her own age she was sibyl and seer,—a prophetess, revealing the future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself she was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and Helen,—a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of romantic fulness and classic limitation. They saw with surprise her clear good-sense balancing her now of sentiment and ardent courage. They saw her comprehension of both sides of every question, and gave her their confidence, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... create imaginary characters, which in their own way revealed my sorrows, my weaknesses, my follies and my virtues, forming new personalities with independent life: as my dear friend Goethe created Werther, Faust, Egmont and Tasso. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the Metropolitan Opera House Mr. Abbey's Singers Gounod's "Faust" and Christine Nilsson Marcella Sembrich and Her Versatility Sofia Scalchi Signor Kaschmann Signor Stagno Ambroise Thomas's "Mignon" Madame ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... stay with me in London. When we were all coming home from the theatre one night after Faust (the year must have been 1886), I said ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... performance,—there united itself to the deepest reverence and devotedness, in his People, a feeling of awe, as for one whose limbs are not moved by earthly life [fanciful, considerably!]. And when Goethe, himself become an old man, finished his last Drama [Second Part of FAUST], the figure of the old King again rose on him, and stept into his Poem; and his Faust got transformed into an unresting, creating, pitilessly exacting Master, forcing on his salutiferous drains and fruitful canals through the morasses of the Weichsel." [G. Freytag, Neue Bilder ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the proper thing to play, and when the crowd demands the newest rag-time. She will feel an atmospheric change as unswervingly as any barometer, and switch in a moment from "Good-bye Girls, Good-bye" to the love duet from Faust. She can play Chopin just as well as she can play Sousa, and she will tactfully strike up "It's Always Fair Weather" when she sees a crowd of young fellows sit down at a table; "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" to welcome ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sing the jewel song from Faust. The singer was at the piano in the foyer, but was so enveloped in black lace that she could hardly be seen. Her voice was so good, her method so perfect, that every one listened in delight. Even the tenor, for he was a thorough musician, was ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... sold at auction on the public square, As if to destroy the last vestige Of my memory and influence. For those of you who could not see the virtue Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy" And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline," Were really the power in the village, And often you asked me "What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?" I am out of your way now, Spoon River, Choose your own good and call it good. For I could never make you see That no one knows what is good ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... punished in his old age. No doubt he had sinned gaily enough in that far-off time when life's cup was still brimming with wine, and no asp hid among the roses; but Nemesis had been an unseen spectator of all his thoughtless actions, and now she came to demand her just dues. He felt somewhat as Faust must have felt when Mephistopheles suggested a visit to Hades, in repayment of those years of magic youth and magic power. So long ago it seemed since he had married Rosanna Moore, that he almost persuaded himself ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... critic, born near Grenoble, in the dep. of Isere, France; sent to study medicine in Paris; abandoned it for music, to which he devoted his life. His best known works are the "Symphonie Fantastique," "Romeo and Juliet," and the "Damnation of Faust"; with the "Symphonie," which he produced while he was yet but a student at the Conservatoire in Paris, Paganini was so struck that he presented ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... me you want my overture to Goethe's "Faust." As I know of no reason to withhold it from you except that it does not please me any longer, I send it to you, because I think that in this matter the only important question is whether the overture pleases you. If the latter should be the case, dispose ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... born of a philosophical conception which relates it to Goethe's "Faust," has been received with particular interest. Andreyev, in writing it, has come very near to solving the question of the meaning of life, and its justification. And, to the person who ponders a while over this work, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... then commenced the most heartrending labor at which I have ever been present," and she pictures him to us agonized, for days and weeks, running after the bits of lost inspiration. Goethe, likewise, in a letter to Humboldt regarding his Faust, which occupied him for sixty years, full of interruptions and gaps: "The difficulty has been to get through strength of will what is really to be gotten only by a spontaneous act of nature." Zola, according to his biographer, Toulouse, "imagines a novel, always starting out ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... It was our favourite opera—"Faust." It was the one piece that we could agree on. Looking back since, I have wondered at the coincidence. The old myth of age to youth and the subcurrent of sin with its stalking, laughing, subtle Mephistopheles. It is strange that we should have gone to this one opera on this one evening. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... took that ineffable grace belonging solely to childhood, or the fresh youth into which childhood merges,—she was just what you might imagine a sleeping Margaret, before that most simple and gentle of all a poet's visions of womanhood had met with Faust, or her slumbers been ruffled with a dream ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... can I never convince you that I have no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which seems to have frightened every body? Yet they are nothing to the expressions in Goethe's Faust (which are ten times hardier), and not a whit more bold than those of Milton's Satan. My ideas of a character may run away with me: like all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with the character while I draw ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... make Faust's bargain! The bodily attendance of the devil may be mythical; but in the spirit he is always with us. And how rarely have we the power to break the contract! The London merchant had so sold himself. He had given himself body and soul to a devil. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... This is the "Faust" of Gaelic poetry, incommunicable except to the native reader, and, like that celebrated composition, an untranslatable tissue of tenderness, sublimity, and mocking ribaldry. The heroine is understood ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... ideas so daring that his brother scientists were embarrassed to know where to place him. There were those who thought of him as a brilliant charlatan; but the convincing intelligence and self-control of his glance repudiated that idea. The Faust-like aspect of the man might lay him open to the suspicion of having too experimental and inquisitive a mind. But he had, it would seem, ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Avallon, in South France, I went to see 'Faust' played at the little country theater: it was done with scarcely any means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains, and a blue light or two. But the night on the Brocken was nevertheless extremely appalling to me,—a strange ghastliness being obtained in some of the witch scenes merely ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... no doubt that his fiery harangues gave Turgenev much material for his later novels. It is characteristic, too, that while his student friends went wild at the theatre over Schiller, Turgenev immensely preferred Goethe, and could practically repeat the whole first part of "Faust" by heart. Turgenev, like Goethe, was a natural aristocrat in his manner and in his literary taste—and had the same dislike for extremists of all kinds. With the exception of Turgenev's quiet but profound pessimism, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... consider individual writers, how many of their titles and complete works are suggested by the Bible. It is interesting to see how one idea of the Scripture will appear and reappear among many writers. Take one illustration. The Faust story is an effort to make concrete one verse of Scripture: "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Professor Moulton reminds us that the Faust legend appeared first in the Middle Ages. In early English, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... the very words recall to your memory old amber-coloured engravings of sturdy men, with waving locks, grasping the arm of the printing-press, by the side of Faust, Schoeffer, and Gottenberg? Or, perhaps, the words of Schiller's "Song of the Bell" may not be unknown to you, and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... which he did not pay at last. The myth must have arisen from man's recognition of the inexorable sequence of cause from effect, in the moral world, which even repentance cannot avert. Goethe tries to imagine an atonement for Faust's trespass against one human soul in his benefactions to the race at large; but it is a very ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... rich motives, and have stolen what was most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... and an arrant poltroon, nor did it enable Byron to become a religious force like Shelley. Let us, then, leave Byron's Don Juan out of account. Mozart's is the last of the true Don Juans; for by the time he was of age, his cousin Faust had, in the hands of Goethe, taken his place and carried both his warfare and his reconciliation with the gods far beyond mere lovemaking into politics, high art, schemes for reclaiming new continents ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... casement, and said he had observed a volume of a new edition of Goethe on my table—would I lend it him for a little? He carried off the volume accordingly, and retreated with it to his den. It contained the Faust, and, I believe, in a more complete shape than he had before seen that masterpiece of his old favorite. When we met at breakfast, a couple of hours after, he was full of the poem—dwelt with enthusiasm on the airy beauty of its lyrics, the terrible pathos of the scene before the Mater ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... stimulating action that discomfort, even pain, may be welcomed on account of the emotional waves they call up, because they "lash into movement the dreary calm of the sea's soul," and produce that alternation of pain and enjoyment for which Faust longed. Groos, who recalls this passage in his very thorough and profound discussion of the region wherein tragedy has its psychological roots, points out that it is the overwhelming might of the storm itself, and not the peace of calm after the storm, which appeals to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... things in the background, perhaps because they could not play them in an effective way. On the other hand, certain works of Schumann conceived on a larger and bolder scale, and in which the limits of his gifts become apparent are now carefully brought forward. [Footnote: Such as the Overtures to Faust, Die Braut von Messina, Julius Caesar; the "Balladen," Das Gluck von Edenhall, Des Sanger Fluch, Vom Pagen und der Konigstochter, etc.] The public does not exactly like these works, but their performance offers an opportunity ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... of the period, that of Faust, or Dr. Faustus, has obtained the most lasting popularity. There are good reasons for believing that the hero of this tale was a real personage, who lived in Suabia in the early part of the sixteenth century. He ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and the definite justification are wanting. Goethe failed in this in his Faust, resourceful and far-seeing though he was—he failed because a certain sympathy is awakened for Mephistopheles in being, so to say, chivied out of his bargain, when he had complied with the terms of the contract by Faust; and Gounod in his opera does exactly for "immediate dramatic effect," what we hold it would be necessary to do for R. L. Stevenson. Goethe, with his casuistries which led him to allegory and all manner of overdone symbolisms ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Alphars Sprosse erhebt nun aufs neue die blutige Klinge Und begehrt, dem Gefall'nen die tdliche Wunde zu spenden. Hagen, der Recke, jedoch, des eignen Schmerzes vergessend, Beugt schnell nieder das Haupt und hlt es dem Hiebe entgegen, 1370 Und es vermag der Held die geschwungene Faust nicht zu hemmen. Aber der Helm, geschmiedet mit Fleiss und trefflich bereitet, Trotzt dem Hieb, und es sprhen alsbald in die Hhe die Funken. ber die Hrte betroffen, zerspringt, o Jammer! die Klinge, Und in der Luft und im Grase erglnzen die klirrenden Teile. 1375 Aber sobald der Krieger ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... came when he had no money left. He went back to his old home, Mainz, and there met a rich goldsmith named Fust (or Faust). ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren
... the order reported, are Walters, Fodermaier, Gellatly, Faust, Bates. Lancaster, does not bear well and is not hardy in the northern areas. Best yields reported are from Walters and Bates. Other reports are inadequate or absent. Most precocious, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... we feel compelled to offer a few remarks. We think every great composer owes it to his own God-gift, and to the human beings whom he is to influence, not to select intrinsically repulsive subjects, and such have we found both 'Don Juan' and 'Faust.' Now we are not morbidly fastidious, and we well know the freedom that must be accorded to art, that it may have ample scope and range in the delineation of human feeling and romantic situation; but ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... his translation of "Faust," which was accepted abroad as a monument of his scholarship, and remains to-day one of the best translations into English of the great ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of grief, coming near the words of despair of Faust. There is a tone in them of what the Germans ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... part of nature; few of our wishes can be fulfilled; privation and sufferings await us at every moment. "Privation is thy lot, privation! That is the eternal song which resounds at every moment, which, our whole life through, each hour sings hoarsely to our ears!" laments Faust. What remains, then, for man? "Everything cries to us that we must resign ourselves." "There are few men, however, who, conscious of the privations and sufferings in store for them in life, and desirous to avoid the necessity of resigning ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... interior fastnesses was remarkable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the excitable Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give evidence of their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these aboriginals find expression. During the rendition of "Faust," Guzman Blanco, extravagantly pleased by the "Jewel Song," cast upon the stage a purse of gold pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead to the extent of whatever loose coin they had convenient, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... declining years in peace," but as the sun goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country, but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your pathway and you will carry home with you a Mephisto ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... I, rubbing my hands, "you are very kind, and so is our mutual friend; I shall be happy to make myself useful in German; and if you think a good translation from Goethe—his 'Sorrows' for example, or more particularly his 'Faust'—" ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... an imitative character. When a juvenile and facile writer's taste is still unsettled, and his own style is as yet unformed, he eagerly tries his hand at the reproduction of the work of others; translates the "Iliad" or "Faust," or suits himself with unsuspecting promptitude to the production of masques, or pastorals, or life dramas—or whatever may be the prevailing fashion in poetry—after the manner of the favourite literary models of the day. A priori, therefore, everything ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... scene of Gounod's most popular opera Mephistopheles conjures up visions of Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy to beguile the jaded interest of Faust. The list reads almost like a catalogue of the operas of Massenet whose fine talent was largely given to the celebration of the famous courtesans of the ancient world. With the addition of a few more names from the roster of antiquity (Thais, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... "Our friend Faust opposite me," said Pasquale, raising his champagne glass. "Hasn't he been transformed from the lean and elderly bookworm into the gay, young gallant about the town? Once one could scarcely drag him from his cell to the quietest of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... conversation; and one reads it rejoicing with one's friends, feeling the special rapture of united comprehension, of mind touching mind, like the little thrill of voice touching voice on the resolving sevenths of the old duets in thirds. Or even when, remembering some graver page—say the dedication of "Faust" to Goethe's dead contemporaries—one fetches the book and reaches it silently to the other one, not daring to read it out loud.... It is when these things happen that one is really getting the good of books; and that one feels that there really is something astonishing and mysterious in words ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... agony to him to see her driving herself through this piteous catechism. The lantern of memory flashed a moment on to the immortal picture of Faust and Margaret. Was it not only that winter they ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "John Faust Cudlington, a German, was requested, in a company of gay people, to perform in their presence some tricks of his trade. He promised to show them a vine loaded with grapes, ripe and ready to gather. They thought, as it was the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... a figured grain), Ohio, Stabler, Ten Eyck, and Thomas. Of pecan, there were five varieties, Busseron, Butterick, Greenriver, Indiana and Posey. In the group of heartnuts, there were two named varieties, Bates and Faust, and one of which Mr. Gerber appeared not to have the name. He simply called it a "sport." There were filberts of various kinds, Barcelona, DuChilly and Jones Hybrids, being the ones bearing variety designations. Also there were Persian (English) walnut trees, principally Broadview and Crath. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... that they are too weak and poor in spirit to challenge it. It is the challenging that engrosses him, and enchants him, and raises up the magic of his wonder. It is as futile, in the end, as Hamlet's or Faust's—but still a gallant and a gorgeous adventure, a game uproariously worth the playing, an enterprise ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... other of the principal parts in 'Il Trovatore'. A question being asked as to the plot of the then popular piece, it was found that not one of the company had the vaguest notion what it was all about. The old lady who, during the church scene in 'Faust', asked her grand-daughter, in a spirit of humble inquiry, what the relationship was between the two persons on the stage, is no figment of a diseased imagination; the thing actually happened not long ago, and one is left to wonder what impression the preceding scenes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... help being reminded, as I looked at him, of another black poodle, which Faust entertained for a short time with unhappy results, and I thought that a very moderate degree of incantation would be enough to bring the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... serious-minded antiquity, although they originated in classic Italy. It is the grotesque, lastly, which, colouring the same drama with the fancies of the North and of the South in turn, exhibits Sganarelle capering about Don Juan and Mephistopheles crawling about Faust. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... her brother's tomb might well pass for a grim satire. The Prudence opposite is said to be a portrait of the Pope's mother, Giovanna Gaetani. She resembles nothing more than a duenna of the type of Martha in Goethe's Faust. Here, again, the allegory would point a scathing sarcasm, if we did not remember the ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Many of the gentiles received revelations of Christ, as is clear from their predictions. Thus we read (Job 19:25): "I know that my Redeemer liveth." The Sibyl too foretold certain things about Christ, as Augustine states (Contra Faust. xiii, 15). Moreover, we read in the history of the Romans, that at the time of Constantine Augustus and his mother Irene a tomb was discovered, wherein lay a man on whose breast was a golden plate with the inscription: "Christ shall be born of a virgin, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... all the life that he thus confusedly saw, there was not a single hour to which he could have said with Faust, "Oh, stay, thou art so fair!" For behind it all, there was that inward, unconscious standard of beauty and happiness—the summer which he could not have forgotten if he would, and would not have forgotten if he could. It did not console or comfort him at all. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... presents, like his first, this opposition between the poetic mind and the common sense of practical men, between the ideal and the real, between the subjective mode and the objective mode of seeing and representing things; it is the same opposition, I say, but with what a diversity! Even in "Faust" we still find this contrast, rendered, I admit—as the subject required—much more coarsely on both hands, and materialized. It would be quite worth while if a psychological explanation were attempted of this character, personified and specified ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of the band, the form of Goethe greeted the city of his birth. He is represented as leaning on the trunk of a tree, holding in his right hand a roll of parchment, and in his left a wreath. The pedestal, which is also of bronze, contains bas reliefs, representing scenes from Faust, Wilhelm Meister and Egmont. In the evening Goethe's house, in a street near, was illuminated by arches of lamps between the windows, and hung with wreaths of flowers. Four pillars of colored lamps ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... out of step; we did not keep pace with the other nations in internal political development, and, instead, devoted ourselves to the most far-reaching developments of mechanism and to their counterpart in bids for power. It was Faust, lured away from his true path, cast off by the Earth-Spirit, astray among witches, ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... hand he wrote every other day to his mother and every other day to Ellen Culpepper with unwavering precision. He told his mother the news, and he told Ellen Culpepper the news plus some Emerson, something more of "Faust," with such dashes of Longfellow and Ruskin as seemed to express his soul. He never wrote to Ellen of money, and so strong was her influence upon him that when he had written to her after his quarrel with the driver, he went out in the night, hunted the man up, and paid him ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... replace, and hereafter he begins to concentrate more and more upon himself to the completion of those works which he had had in mind and preparation through so many years, the greatest of which was to be the "Faust." In "Poetry and Truth from My Own Life," which appeared in 1811-14, he was actuated by the desire of supplying some kind of a key to the collected edition of his works that had been published in 1808; and whatever faults, or errors, it may contain as a history, as a piece of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton |
