Faust Quotes

“Who are you then?"
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Once I blazed across the sky,
Leaving trails of flame;
I fell to earth, and here I lie -
Who'll help me up again?
-A Shooting Star”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“من هرگز در حسرت بال پرندگان نخواهم بود. جذبه های جانم، از کتابی به کتاب دیگر و از صفحه ای به صفحه ی دیگر مرا به جاهای بسیار دورتر می برند.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“Waste not a day in vain digression;
with resolute, courageous trust
seek every possible impression
and make it firmly your posession
you'll then work on because you must.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give
Me up to the Devil this very minute.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“To be, or not to be: what a question!”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

“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.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Vol. 1

“A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“God Is, Lucifer is a devil, and there is a Hell.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Vol. 1

“How to please the public - that's the test,
But nowadays I find I'm in a fix;
I know they're not accustomed to the best,
But they've all read so much they know the tricks.
How can we give then something fresh and new
That's serious, but entertaining too?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“No matter what happens now
You shouldn’t be afraid
Because I know today has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.”
― Radiohead

“„Was glänzt ist für den Augenblick geboren; Das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Oh Kay kau seperti kunci yang membuka pintu hatiku. Pesonamu meremukkanku.
Seperti golok yang berdencing mengiris ngiris dagingku memotong tipis jantungku. Biar kau tetak leherku dengan rindu yang kau ciptakan tanpa iba dan belas kasihan.

Kay oh Kay tak ada yang menyerupaimu di dunia ini.
Sebab bagimu, aku adalah bocah nakal yang boleh menangis demi sebuah boneka mainan. Kemana kau berlagu, irama musik kan menyertaimu. Dan biarkan lantai dansa mendatangimu, memutar dan meninggikanmu dalam tarian yang membuat semua orang tergila-gila.

Kay oh Kay kau gobang pedang parang celuritku. Kau belati yang menikam nikam, kau rajam aku dengan jarum manis lugu senyumanmu. Kau mulut manis yang mendesah yang mengerang yang tertawa yang membuat jiwaku resah gelisah.

Kau Kay oh Kay. Ludahmu yang manis menetes bagai madu yang paling gula di benakku yang kehausan. Kuhasratkan engkau dari sarang yang paling mesum, jalan yang paling ingkar dan pikiran yang paling lancung. Kuingin kecap nektar bungamu yang paling nikmat.

Oh betapa kau nodai aku dengan apimu. Kau jerat aku dengan kepolosanmu. Dengan ketelanjanganmu yang membuatku sesat. Betapa kau memberi asa yang tak kumiliki. Kau menangkan hati yang tak kuperjuangkan.

Kay oh Kay engkau satu satunya jawaban yang tak pernah kupertanyakan. Tujuan yang tak pernah aku duga tapi menyambutku dengan riang gembira. Kaulah kenyataan yang tak pernah aku mimpikan namun terwujud dengan sendirinya.

Bagaimana aku menerimamu sebagaimana engkau menerimaku dengan segenap pesona kegilaanmu. Kay oh Kay rembulan matahariku. Kaulah sungai sekaligus lautku. Hanya padamu mataku tertuju, hanya padamu hatiku tergetar.

Kau biarkan aku menjadi kunci yang memasuki lobang jiwamu yang paling gelap. Bukan dalam keagunganmu anganku mengembara, melainkan dalam kemolekanmu yang memabukkan. Kau telah memenjara jiwaku yang paling celaka.

Oh Kay kau pisau dapurku, kapakku, gergajiku, palu obengku. Kau perbudak aku dalam nafsu tak terlerai ini. Padamu aku menghamba bagai seorang pelayan yang bodoh. Kambing tuli dan buta yang cuma mengabdi pada satu tuan. Kaulah majikan dari semua hasrat dan kedegilan ini.

Semua yang aku ketahui tentangmu adalah palsu. Bagaimana engkau berkenan mengijinkan aku mencintai orang lain selain dirimu? Kay oh Kay bila sungguh memujamu akan memberiku makna hakiki sebuah puisi, lalu bagaimana engkau bisa memberiku cinta sejati yang tak pernah engkau miliki?”
― Titon Rahmawan

“Oh Kay you are like a key that opens the door of my heart. Your charm crushes me. Like a clinking machete slicing my flesh thinly cutting my heart. Let you hit my neck with the longing that you create without compassion and mercy.

Kay oh Kay there's no one like you in this world. Because for you, I'm a little kid who can cry for a stuffed toy. Wherever you sing, the rhythm of the music will accompany you. And let the dance floor come to you, twisting and lifting you in a dance that makes everyone crazy.

Kay oh Kay you are my sickle machete. You are the dagger that stabbed my soul, you stoned me with the sweet needle of your innocent smile. You're the sweet mouth that sighs that moans that laughs that makes my soul restless.

Kay oh Kay. Your sweet spit drips like the most sugary honey on my thirsty mind. I desire you from the most sordid nests, the most abominable paths and the most perverted thoughts. I want to taste the most delicious nectar of your flowers.

Oh how you taint me with your fire. You trapped me with your innocence. With your nakedness that leads me astray. How you give hope that I do not have. You won a heart I didn't fight for.

Kay oh Kay you are the only answer I never questioned. A destination I never expected but greeted me with joy. You are the reality that I never dreamed of but came true by itself.

How do I accept you as you accept me with all the charm of your madness. Kay oh Kay my sunshine moon. You are my river and sea. Only you my eyes are fixed, only you my heart trembles.

You let me be the key that enters the darkest hole of your soul. It is not in your majesty that my dreams wander, but in your intoxicating beauty. You have imprisoned my most wretched soul.

Oh Kay you are my kitchen knife, my axe, my saw, my hammer, my screwdriver. You enslaved me in this unbreakable lust. I serve you like a stupid servant. A deaf and blind goat that only serves one master. You are the master of all this passion and madness.

Everything I know about you is a lie. How did you deign to allow me to love someone other than you? Kay oh Kay, if truly adoring you will give me the true meaning of a poem, then how can you give me true love that you never had?”
― Titon Rahmawan

“Judas sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver; Faust sold his for some extra years of youth; Marilyn Monroe deserted Jesus Christ for Arthur Miller.”
― Nicholas Samstag, The Uses of Ineptitude or How Not To Want To Do Better

“Through many a long day you'll be taught
That what you once did without thinking,
As easy as if it were eating or drinking,
Must be done in order: one! two! three!
But truly, this though factory of ours
Is like some weaver's masterpiece:
One treadle stirs a thousand threads,
This way and that the shuttles whistle,
Threads flow invisibly, one ... Read morestroke
Ties a thousand knots .... The philosopher steps in
And proves to you it had to be so;
The first was so, the second was so,
And therefore the third and fourth were so.
If the first and second hadn't existed,
The third and fourth would never have existed.
And this is praised by every scholar,
But never a one becomes a weaver.
To know and describe a living thing
You first get rid of all its spirit:
Then the parts are all in the palm of your hand,
And all that you lack is the spirit that binds them!
Encheiresis naturae, chemists call it,
And fool themselves and never know it”
― Goethe

“Just take a look at our patrons, and you'll know
Some don't appreciate us, others never will.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“ Într-adevăr ştiu multe, dar aş vrea să ştiu totul. ”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, and the Urfaust

“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.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Vol. 2

“... 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.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

“In fact a favourite problem of Tyndall is—Given the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1

“Faust: What cheerful light breaks on my gloomy
fancies,
As in the midnight woods when moonlight
floods the skies?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“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.”
― Ramona Fradon, The Gnostic Faustus

“Wagner: Yet elocution makes the orator;
I'm far behind, I feel it more and more.

Faust: Seek thou an honest retribution!
Be thou no motley, jingling fool!
It needs but little elocution
To speak good sense by reason's rule.
It ye've a message to deliver,
Need ye for words be hunting ever?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“„Bin weder Fräulein, weder schön,
kann ungeleitet nach Hause gehn.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Bu yüzden istemedim hiçbir zaman sevmeyi,
Bilirim ölesiye üzüleceğimi.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Things had certainly come down a long way since the great days of Faust and Mephistopheles, when a man could gain all the knowledge of the universe, achieve all the ambitions of his mind and all the pleasures of the flesh for the price of his soul. Now it was a few record royalties, a few pieces of trendy furniture, a trinket to stick on your bathroom wall [...].”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Verweile doch! Du bist so schön!
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,
Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!
Dann mag die Totenglocke schallen,
Dann bist du deines Dienstes frei,
Die Uhr mag stehn, der Zeiger fallen,
Es sei die Zeit für mich vorbei!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“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?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche