Quotes from Faust

“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“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, quote from Faust

“Sweet moonlight, shining full and clear,
Why do you light my torture here?
How often have you seen me toil,
Burning last drops of midnight oil.
On books and papers as I read,
My friend, your mournful light you shed.
If only I could flee this den
And walk the mountain-tops again,
Through moonlit meadows make my way,
In mountain caves with spirits play -
Released from learning's musty cell,
Your healing dew would make me well!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“But who will dare to speak the truth out clear?
The few who anything of truth have learned,
And foolishly did not keep truth concealed,
Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed,
Since time began we've crucified and burned”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Medicine, and Law, and Philosophy -
You've worked your way through every school,
Even, God help you, Theology,
And sweated at it like a fool.
Why labour at it any more?
You're no wiser now than you were before.
You're Master of Arts, and Doctor too,
And for ten years all you've been able to do
Is lead your students a fearful dance
Through a maze of error and ignorance.
And all this misery goes to show
There's nothing we can ever know.
Oh yes you're brighter than all those relics,
Professors and Doctors, scribblers and clerics,
No doubts or scruples to trouble you,
Defying hell, and the Devil too.
But there's no joy in self-delusion;
Your search for truth ends in confusion.
Don't imagine your teaching will ever raise
The minds of men or change their ways.
And as for worldly wealth, you have none -
What honour or glory have you won?
A dog could stand this life no more.
And so I've turned to magic lore;
The spirit message of this art
Some secret knowledge might impart.
No longer shall I sweat to teach
What always lay beyond my reach;
I'll know what makes the world revolve,
Its mysteries resolve,
No more in empty words I'll deal -
Creation's wellsprings I'll reveal!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“When I say to the Moment flying;
'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!'
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
And my final ruin I will bear!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“There is no day that one should skip
But one should seize, without distrust,
The possible with iron grip”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

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

“Though the ear choose not to hear,
In the heart I echo,clear:
Always found, and never sought,
Praised, as well as cursed, in thought.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

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

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

“I call him happy who still hopes to rise
To the surface in this sea of error.
The very things we don't know, we could use
And what we do know we have no use for.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“I hope we shall get on together, you and I;
I've come to cheer you up - That's why
I'm dressed up like an aristocrat
In a fine red coat with golden stitches,
A stiff silk cape on top of that,
A long sharp dagger in my breeches,
And a cockerel's feather in my hat.
Take my advice - if I were you,
I'd get an outfit like this too;
Then you'd be well equipped to see
Just how exciting life can be.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“To me the mountain mass lies nobly mute,
The whences and the whys I don't dispute.
When Nature by and in herself was founded,
In purity the earthen sphere she rounded.
In summit and in gorge did pleasure seek,
And threaded cliff to cliff and peak to peak;
Then did she fashion sloping hills at peace
And gently down into the vale release.
All greens and grows, and to her gay abundance
Your swirling lunacies are sheer redundance.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Yes - this I hold to with devout insistence,
Wisdom's last verdict goes to say:
He only earns both freedom and existence
Who must reconquer them each day.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Dust shall he eat, and greedily,
like my celebrated serpent-cousin”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“THE WITCH.
[dancing].

O I shall lose my wits, I fear,
Do I, again, see Squire Satan here!

MEPHISTOPHELES.
Woman, the name offends my ear!

THE WITCH.
Why so? What has it done to you?

MEPHISTOPHELES.
It has long since to fable-books been banished;
But men are none the better for it; true,
The wicked one, but not the wicked ones, has vanished.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“ماذا تريد أن تعطي أيها الشيطان المسكين؟ هل فهم أمثالك روح الإنسان في مسعاه السامي؟ نعم عندك طعام ولكنه لايشبع وعندك ذهب أحمر لكنه كالزئبق ينساب من يدك ، وعندك قمار ، لكن لا أحد فيه يكسب ، وعندك فتاة ، ولكنها وهي بين أحضاني تغازل جاري بعيونها وتصل حبلها بحبله . إنك قد تعطي لذة الشرف الالهية الجميلة ، لكنه يزول كما يزول الشهاب! أرني الثمرة التي لاتعطب قبل أن يقطفها الإنسان ، والأشجار التي تخضوضر كل يوم من جديد”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Tot ce sclipeşte ţine doar o clipă, ce-i cu temei în veci va fi păstrat.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“ان من لايعرف كيف يحكم ذاته الباطنة ، يلذ له أن يتحكم في ارادة الجار بحسب ما تملي عليه كبرياؤه”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Du, Erde, warst auch diese Nacht beständig
Und atmest neu erquickt zu meinen Füßert,
Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
Du regst und rührst ein kräftiges Beschließen,
Zum höchsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.

This night, thou, Earth! hast also stood unshaken,
And now thou breathest new-refreshed before me,
And now beginnest, all thy gladness granting,
A vigorous resolution to restore me,
To seek that highest life for which I'm panting.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“He calls it reason, using it To be more beast than ever beast was yet.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,
For good things, oft, are not so near;
A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,
Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“الطبيعة تتلفع بالأسرارولن تسمح أبدا أن يمزق عنها الحجاب، وما لاتريد هي أن تكشفه لعقلك، لن تستطيع أنت إرغامها على كشفه”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“By Fortune's adverse buffets overborne
To solitude I fled, to wilds forlorn,
And not in utter loneliness to live,
Myself at last did to the Devil give!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Well, that's Philosophy I've read,
And Law and Medicine, and I fear
Theology, too, from A to Z;
Hard studies all, that have cost me dear.
And so I sit, poor silly man
No wiser now than when I began.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

“Entbehren sollst du - sollst entbehren. Thou shalt forego, shalt do without.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust

About the author

Popular quotes

“It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires spirit!”
― Jean Webster, quote from Daddy-Long-Legs

“I congratulate myself on not having arrived into the world until the present time. This age suits my taste.”
― Anne Rice, quote from Pandora

“Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden? Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water–-peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing–-the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.”
― Marilynne Robinson, quote from Housekeeping

“He Sat in the window thinking. Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in the other. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature...the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth wile.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust

“So? If I die, then I die! The loss to the world won’t be great. Yes, and I’m fairly bored with myself already. I am like a man who is yawning at a ball, whose reason for not going home to bed is only that his carriage hasn’t arrived yet. But the carriage is ready . . . farewell!
I run through the memory of my past in its entirety and can’t help asking myself: Why have I lived? For what purpose was I born? . . .
There probably was one once, and I probably did have a lofty calling, because I feel a boundless strength in my soul . . .
But I didn’t divine this calling. I was carried away with the baits of passion, empty and unrewarding. I came out of their crucible as hard and cold as iron, but I had lost forever the ardor for noble aspirations, the best flower of life.
Since then, how many times have I played the role of the ax in the hands of fate! Like an instrument of execution, I fell on the head of doomed martyrs, often without malice, always without regret . . .
My love never brought anyone happiness, because I never sacrificed anything for those I loved: I loved for myself, for my personal pleasure.
I was simply satisfying a strange need of the heart, with greediness, swallowing their feelings, their joys, their suffering—and was never sated. Just as a man, tormented by hunger, goes to sleep in exhaustion and dreams of sumptuous dishes and sparkling wine before him. He devours the airy gifts of his imagination with rapture, and he feels easier. But as soon as he wakes: the dream disappears . . . and all that remains is hunger and despair redoubled!
And, maybe, I will die tomorrow! . . . And not one being on this earth will have ever understood me totally. Some thought of me as worse, some as better, than I actually am . . . Some will say “he was a good fellow,” others will say I was a swine. Both one and the other would be wrong.
Given this, does it seem worth the effort to live? And yet, you live, out of curiosity, always wanting something new . . . Amusing and vexing!”
― Mikhail Lermontov, quote from A Hero of Our Time

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.