Quotes from Faust: First Part

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

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

“You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

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

“Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well,
He hardly will be caught a second time.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Whatever is the lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.
I want to seize the highest and the lowest,
to load its woe and bliss upon my breast,
and thus expand my single self titanically
and in the end go down with all the rest.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
'Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.
Unto the world in grossly loving zest,
With clinging tendrils, one adheres;
The other rises forcibly in quest
Of rarefied ancestral spheres.
If there be spirits in the air
That hold their sway between the earth and sky,
Descend out of the golden vapors there
And sweep me into iridescent life.
Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,
Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Everything transitory is but an image.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it's alive; then they have the parts and the'be lost the whole, for the link that's missing was the living soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider auch Theologie
Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn.
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;
Heiße Magister, heiße Doktor gar
Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr
Herauf, herab und quer und krumm
Meine Schüler an der Nase herum-
Und sehe, daß wir nichts wissen können!
Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen.
Zwar bin ich gescheiter als all die Laffen,
Doktoren, Magister, Schreiber und Pfaffen;
Mich plagen keine Skrupel noch Zweifel,
Fürchte mich weder vor Hölle noch Teufel-
Dafür ist mir auch alle Freud entrissen,
Bilde mir nicht ein, was Rechts zu wissen,
Bilde mir nicht ein, ich könnte was lehren,
Die Menschen zu bessern und zu bekehren.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“I see my discourse leaves you cold;
Dear kids, I do not take offense;
Recall: the Devil, he is old,
Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint! Und das mit Recht; denn alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“I nothing had, and yet enough for youth--Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,--O, give me back my youth again!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few priveledged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Dear me! how long is art!
And short is our life!
I often know amid the scholar's strife
A sinking feeling in my mind and heart.
How difficult the means are to be found
By which the primal sources may be breached;
And long before the halfway point is reached,
They bury a poor devil in the ground.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“One mind is enough for a thousand hands.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“If the whole world I once could see
On free soil stand, with the people free
Then to the moment might I say,
Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“I've often heard it said a preacher
might learn with a comedian for a teacher.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“[Ich bin] ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“That which issues from the heart alone,
Will bend the hearts of others to your own.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“While Man's desires and aspirations stir, He cannot choose but err.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Your suns and worlds are not within my ken,
I merely watch the plaguey state of men.
The little god of earth remains the same queer sprite
As on the first day, or in primal light.
His life would be less difficult, poor thing,
Without your gift of heavenly glimmering;
He calls it Reason, using light celestial
Just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.
To me he seems, with deference to Your Grace,
One of those crickets, jumping round the place,
Who takes his flying leaps, with legs so long,
Then falls to grass and chants the same old song;
But, not content with grasses to repose in,
This one will hunt for muck to stick his nose in.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

“Did we force ourselves on you, or you on us?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Faust: First Part

About the author

Popular quotes

“At this moment the President is beginning to speak in New Orleans and the Vice-President is mounting the platform at NASA a few miles away. Both are making a plea for unity. The President, who is an integrationist Mormon married to a liberated Catholic, will appeal to Leftists to respect law and order. The Vice-President, a Southern Baptist Knothead married to a conservative Unitarian, is asking Knotheads for tolerance and understanding, etcetera. The poor U.S.A.! Even”
― Walker Percy, quote from Love in the Ruins

“و أخذ النجم واهب الحياة يبزغ ببطء حتى صار مستديراً متوهجاً لونه الأحمر في كبد السماء”
― Jean Craighead George, quote from Julie of the Wolves

“She gave me an understanding nod. But she could never understand that losers, even if they do not have a brain, have a heart.”
― Chetan Bhagat, quote from Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition

“All the world's a circus. Sometimes you choose your act and sometimes it's assigned to you. I had roamed the arena for far too long, roaring and bellowing, believing that I wasn't brave enough to leap through fire. But all along, she had stood there, constant and calm."I can't make the fire go away," she had seemed to say, "I can't guarantee you won't get burned. But I can hold this hoop for you, I can remain steady and strong, because I believe in you. Because you are mine."
And in the end, I had jumped. And the other side was just as glorious as her eyes had promised.”
― Mia Sheridan, quote from Leo

“You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in the FA Cup. Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg — that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor-tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. Now, with every day that passes, another door seems to close, the one marked PROFESSIONAL STUNTMAN, or FIGHT EVIL ROBOT, until as the weeks go by and the doors — GET BITTEN BY SNAKE, SAVE WORLD FROM ASTEROID, DISMANTLE BOMB WITH SECONDS TO SPARE — keep closing, you begin to hear the sound as a good thing, and start closing some yourself, even ones that didn't necessarily need to be closed.”
― Paul Murray, quote from Skippy Dies

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.