Faust Quotes

“Age doesn’t make us childish, as they say, It finds that we’re still children.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“So give me back that time again, When I was still ‘becoming’,    [185] When words gushed like a fountain In new, and endless flowing, Then for me mists veiled the world, In every bud the wonder glowed, A thousand flowers I unfurled,    [190] That every valley, richly, showed. I had nothing, yet enough: Joy in illusion, thirst for truth. Give every passion, free to move, The deepest bliss, filled with pain,    [195] The force of hate, the power of love, Oh, give me back my youth again!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“I am no god: I feel it all too deeply. I am the worm that writhes in dust: see, As in the dust it lives, and seeks to eat, It’s crushed and buried by the passing feet.    [655] Is this not dust, what these vaults hold, These hundred shelves that cramp me: This junk, and all the thousand-fold Shapes, of a moth-ridden world, around me? Will I find here what I’m lacking else,    [660] Shall I read, perhaps, as a thousand books insist, That Mankind everywhere torments itself, So, here and there, some happy man exists?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“We were the first to carve forms: we began The depiction of gods in the image of Man.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Never trembling at that void where, Imagination damns itself to pain, [715] Striving towards the passage there, Round whose mouth all Hell’s fires flame: Choose to take that step, happy to go Where danger lies, where Nothingness may flow.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Beauty is indivisible: he who owns it Destroys it, rather than share a part of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Good and evil come Unannounced, to Mankind:”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“True, the Immortals appointed Fame, and Fate, As the two ambiguous, doubtful companions”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“When your thirtieth year is over, A man’s as good as dead.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Mind and Nature – don’t speak to Christians so. That’s why men burn atheists, below, Such speech is dangerous, all right, Nature is sin, and Mind’s the devil,”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Where sense fails it’s only necessary [1995] To supply a word, and change the tense.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“I say to you that scholarly fellows [1830] Are like the cattle on an arid heath: Some evil spirit leads them round in circles, While sweet green meadows lie beneath.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“In the end, you are – what you are. Set your hair in a thousand curlicues Place your feet in yard-high shoes, You’ll remain forever, what you are.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Even if Man’s accustomed to take His small world for the Whole, that’s his mistake:”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“So, here and there, some happy man exists?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Care has nested in the heart’s depths, Restless, she rocks there, spoiling joy and rest, [645] There she works her secret pain, And wears new masks, ever and again, Appears as wife and child, fields and houses,”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Oh, God! Art is long And life is short.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“Why are you here, Katrina dear, In daylight clear, At your lover’s door? [3685] No, no! When, It will let in, A maid, and then, Let out a maid no more!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: Parts I & II

“With disciplined, with fierce, mute anger,   Unconquerable battle lust,   O Northern manhood’s finest flower,   O nonpareil youth of the East, 9790 Who wear the lightning of bright armor,   Who break great empires like a reed—   You pass, and thunder follows after,   The earth shakes underneath your tread.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“Every creature aflame as it swims through the night!   How sea, how shore’s held in a burning embrace!   Then let Eros reign with whom all things commence!   Hurrah for the ocean! Hurrah for the waves 8770 And their crests with the sacred fire ablaze!   Hurrah for the water, hurrah for the fire,   Hurrah for their union, so rare, with each other!   ALL TOGETHER. Hurrah for the gentle caressing breezes!   Hurrah for the caves and their secret recesses!   Lift up our voices in praise of the four:   Water, fire, earth, and air!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“In my dear pine-clad mountains of the Harz   There’s a pitchlike smell, a smell I favor   Most of all, excepting that of sulphur.   But here among these Greeks there’s not a trace   Of anything like that. I’m curious   To find out what they use below in their Hell   To stoke the fires with, their kind of fuel.   DRYAD. I guess you’re smart enough in your own country,   Abroad you’re something less than apt; 8220 Stop thinking home thoughts, try, Sir, to adapt   And show due honor to our sacred oak tree.   MEPHISTO. What you have lost, that’s what you think about,”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“MEPHISTO. Honor to you, you reverend peak,   With your great forests of stout oak,   Whose umbrage Luna’s brightest light   Strives in vain to penetrate!   —But in those bushes there I see A spark glowing modestly.   How luckily things work out, yes,   It’s him, it’s him, Homunculus! 8080 And where have you been, minikin?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“High as winged imagination’s flight is,   Nothing it is able to conceive suffices.   But minds uncommon, deep, preserved from arrogance,   Have in the infinite infinite confidence.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“Tear wide open those dark gates boldly Which the whole world skulks past with averted heads. The time has come to disprove by deeds,”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“THE LORD As long as Faustus walks the earth I shan’t, I promise, interfere. While still man strives, still he must err.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two