Faust Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Faust. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!
John Anster (The First Part Of Goethe's Faust)
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (Faust, First Part)
Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.
James E. Faust
Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust: Part 1)
God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.
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)
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 (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
I think the biggest lie the devil ever told was that beauty and goodness are the same.
Daniel Nayeri (Another Faust (The Marlowe School, #1))
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 (Faust, First Part)
Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.
Otto von Bismarck
Everybody in this life has their challenges and difficulties. That is part of our mortal test. The reason for some of these trials cannot be readily understood except on the basis of faith and hope because there is often a larger purpose which we do not always understand. Peace comes through hope.
James E. Faust
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, And each will wrestle for the mastery there.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (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 (Faust)
I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (Faust - Part One)
Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici (by the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
Faust
from desire I rush to satisfaction; from satisfaction I leap to desire.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust)
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 (Faust, First Part)
If it looks real and feels real, do you think it matters if it's real?
Daniel Nayeri (Another Faust (The Marlowe School, #1))
Everything transitory is but an image.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no greater good in all the world than motherhood. The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.
James E. 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 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 (Faust, First Part)
We should not allow our personal values to erode, even if others think we are peculiar.
James E. 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 (Faust)
My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain. . . . For as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.
Susan Kay (Phantom)
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 (Faust, First Part)
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, Part One)
Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria: 1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...) 2) They have compassion for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...) 3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts. 4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is to insult them, and the liar is diminished in the eyes of the person he lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at home, they don't show off to impress their juniors. (...) 5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is just cheap striving for effects, it's vulgar, old hat and false. (...) 6) They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewellery of hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the first person they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They regard prases like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of thing one only hears from [very minor journalists] -- as absurd. If they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off as if it were 100 roubles' by swanking about with their portfolios, and they don't boast of being able to gain admission to places other people aren't allowed in (...) True talent always sits in the shade, mingles with the crowd, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...) 7) If they do possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in it ... they know they have a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others] rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in their habits. (...) 8) They work at developing their aesthetic sensibility ... Civilized people don't simply obey their baser instincts ... they require mens sana in corpore sano. And so on. That's what civilized people are like ... Reading Pickwick and learning a speech from Faust by heart is not enough if your aim is to become a truly civilized person and not to sink below the level of your surroundings. [From a letter to Nikolay Chekhov, March 1886]
Anton Chekhov (A Life in Letters)
It is a denial of the divinity within us to doubt our potential and our possibilities.
James E. Faust
I am part of the part that once was everything, Part of the darkness which gave birth to light… Mephistopheles, from Faust.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That which issues from the heart alone, Will bend the hearts of others to your own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
Victor Faust did much more than help me escape a life of abuse and servitude. He changed me. He changed the landscape of my dreams, the dreams I had every day about living ordinarily and free and on my own. He changed the colors on the palette from primary to rainbow—as dark as the colors of that rainbow may be.
J.A. Redmerski (Killing Sarai (In the Company of Killers, #1))
If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give Me up to the Devil this very minute.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust)
Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...
Thomas Harris (Hannibal Rising (Hannibal Lecter, #4))
Mut beweist man nicht mit der Faust allein, man braucht den Kopf dazu.
Erich Kästner
One mind is enough for a thousand hands.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (Faust, First Part)
If ever I to the moment shall say: Beautiful moment, do not pass away! Then you may forge your chains to bind me, Then I will put my life behind me, Then let them hear my death-knell toll, Then from your labours you'll be free, The clock may stop, the clock-hands fall, And time come to an end for me!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (Faust, and the Urfaust)
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 (Faust, First Part)
Guilt is a useless feeling. It's never enough to make you change direction--only enough to make you useless.
Daniel Nayeri (Another Faust (The Marlowe School, #1))
I urge the husbands and fathers of this church to be the kind of a man your wife would not want to be without.
James E. Faust
What you inherit from your father must first be earned before it's yours.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It's not so much what happens to us but how we deal with what happens to us.
James E. Faust
While Man's desires and aspirations stir, He cannot choose but err.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust)
It's not worth losing your soul to win a guy.
Daniel Nayeri (Another Faust (The Marlowe School, #1))
schade dass die Natur nur einen Mensch aus dir schuf / denn zum wurdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff" (loose translation: nature, alas, made only one being out of you although there was material for a good man & a rogue)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
[Ich bin] ein Teil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint! Unde das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht; Drum besser wär's daß nichts entstünde. So ist denn alles was ihr Sünde, Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt, Mein eigentliches Element.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (Faust, First Part)
There is no day that one should skip But one should seize, without distrust, The possible with iron grip
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)
Grant me one hour on love’s most sacred shores To clasp the bosom that my soul adores, Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (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 (Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil)
I've often heard it said a preacher might learn with a comedian for a teacher.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, Part One)
... the vintage of history is forever repeating ~ same old vines, same old wines!
E.A. Bucchianeri (Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Vol. 2)
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 (Faust, First Part)
Almost every day brings opportunities to perform unselfish acts for others. Such acts are unlimited and can be as simple as a kind word, a helping hand, or a gracious smile.
James E. Faust
If you don't get caught, you deserve everything you steal.
Daniel Nayeri (Another Faust (The Marlowe School, #1))
Do you know what makes someone beautiful? Confidence. You don't have to have this shape eyes or that shape lips. No one seems to be able to decide which shape is best anyway. You can have every kind of blemish. It's confidence that attracts people. That's what everybody's looking for. It's what no potion can really give you. And believe me, Belle, you've got it. You've got it if you want it.
Daniel Nayeri (Another Faust (The Marlowe School, #1))
When scholars study a thing, they strive To kill it first, if its alive; Then they have the parts and they’ve lost the whole For the link that’s missing was the living soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
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)
Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. ...Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power, the state role.
Joseph Campbell
God Is, Lucifer is a devil, and there is a Hell.
E.A. Bucchianeri (Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Vol. 1)
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 (Faust, and the Urfaust)
The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the question Has never risen of indigestion. Only the Church . . . can take Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
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
What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust: Der Tragödie erster und zweiter Teil. Urfaust)
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness ... To fight Your idea of misery ... Submission The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility The vice you detest most ... Servility Your aversion ... Martin Tupper Favourite occupation ... Book-worming Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust] Favourite flower ... Daphne Favourite colour ... Red Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny Favourite dish ... Fish Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted].
Karl Marx
Thus, Marlowe posed the silent question: could aspiring Icarus be happy with a toilsome life on land managing a plough with plodding oxen having once tasted the weightless bliss of flight?
E.A. Bucchianeri (Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World)
„Was glänzt ist für den Augenblick geboren; Das Echte bleibt der Nachwelt unverloren.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
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 (Faust)
Did we force ourselves on you, or you on us?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
As long as on the earth endures his life To deal with him have full and free permission; Man's hour on earth is weakness, error, strife.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
Holiness is the strength of the soul. It comes by faith and through obedience to God's laws and ordinances. God then purifies the heart by faith, and the heart becomes purged from that which is profane and unworthy. When holiness is achieved by conforming to God's will, one knows intuitively that which is wrong and that which is right before the Lord. Holiness speaks when there is silence, encouraging that which is good or reproving that which is wrong.
James E. Faust
But you will never know another's heart, unless you are prepared to give yours too.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine,— And even, alas! Theology,— From end to end, with labor keen; And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust)
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
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but giving up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubts; as young as you self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
James E. Faust (Stories from My Life)
We must realize that we are all, like Dr. Faust, ready to accept the devil's inducements. The devil is in each one of us in the form of an ego that promises the fulfillment of desire on condition that we become subservient to its striving to dominate. The domination of the personality by the ego is a diabolical perversion of the nature of man. The ego was never intended to be the master of the body, but its loyal and obedient servant. The body, as opposed to the ego, desires pleasure, not power. Bodily pleasure is the source from which all our good feelings and good thinking stems. If the bodily pleasure of an individual is destroyed, he becomes an angry, frustrated, and hateful person. His thinking becomes distorted, and his creative potential is lost. He develops self-destructive attitudes.
Alexander Lowen (Pleasure: A Creative Approach To Life)
In my opinion, the teaching, rearing, and training of children requires more intelligence, intuitive understanding, humility, strength, wisdom, spirituality, perseverance, and hard work than any other challenge we might have in life.
James E. Faust (Stories from My Life)
76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
I wonder if you sisters full understand the greatness of your gifts and talents and how all of you can achieve the "highest place of honor" in the Church and in the world. One of your unique, precious, and sublime gifts is your femininity, with its natural grace, goodness, and divinity. Femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength. It is manifest differently in each girl or woman, but each of you possesses it. Femininity is part of your inner beauty. One of your particular gifts is your feminine intuition. Do not limit yourselves. As you seek to know the will of our Heavenly Father in your life and become more spiritual, you will be far more attractive, even irresistible. You can use your smiling loveliness to bless those you love and all you meet, and spread great joy. Femininity is part of the God-given divinity within each of you. It is your incomparable power and influence to do good. You can, through your supernal gifts, bless the lives of children, women, and men. Be proud of your womanhood. Enhance it. Use it to serve others.
James E. Faust
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)
Private choices are not private; they all have public consequences...Our society is the sum total of what millions of individuals do in their private lives. That sum total of private behavior has worldwide public consequences of enormous magnitude. There are no completely private choices.
James E. Faust
Sometimes we carry unhappy feelings about past hurts too long. We spend too much energy dwelling on things that have passed and cannot be changed. We struggle to close the door and let go of the hurt. If, after time, we can forgive whatever may have caused the hurt, we will tap 'into a life-giving source of comfort' through the Atonement, and the 'sweet peace' of forgiveness will be ours ("My Journey to Forgiving," Ensign, Feb. 1997. 43). Some injuries are so hurtful and deep that healing comes only with help from a higher power and hope for perfect justice and restitution in the next life. . . . You can tap into that higher power and receive precious comfort and sweet peace.
James E. Faust
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years, And Theophrastus, at fourscore 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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
I had fallen into a profound dream-like reverie in which I heard him speaking as at a distance. 'And yet there is no one who communes with only one god,' he was saying, 'and the more a man lives in imagination and in a refined understanding, the more gods does he meet with and talk with, and the more does he come under the power of Roland, who sounded in the Valley of Roncesvalles the last trumpet of the body's will and pleasure; and of Hamlet, who saw them perishing away, and sighed; and of Faust, who looked for them up and down the world and could not find them; and under the power of all those countless divinities who have taken upon themselves spiritual bodies in the minds of the modern poets and romance writers, and under the power of the old divinities, who since the Renaissance have won everything of their ancient worship except the sacrifice of birds and fishes, the fragrance of garlands and the smoke of incense. The many think humanity made these divinities, and that it can unmake them again; but we who have seen them pass in rattling harness, and in soft robes, and heard them speak with articulate voices while we lay in deathlike trance, know that they are always making and unmaking humanity, which is indeed but the trembling of their lips.
W.B. Yeats (Rosa Alchemica)
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 (Faust, and the Urfaust)
A thought expressed is a falsehood." In poetry what is not said and yet gleams through the beauty of the symbol, works more powerfully on the heart than that which is expressed in words. Symbolism makes the very style, the very artistic substance of poetry inspired, transparent, illuminated throughout like the delicate walls of an alabaster amphora in which a flame is ignited. Characters can also serve as symbols. Sancho Panza and Faust, Don Quixote and Hamlet, Don Juan and Falstaff, according to the words of Goethe, are "schwankende Gestalten." Apparitions which haunt mankind, sometimes repeatedly from age to age, accompany mankind from generation to generation. It is impossible to communicate in any words whatsoever the idea of such symbolic characters, for words only define and restrict thought, but symbols express the unrestricted aspect of truth. Moreover we cannot be satisfied with a vulgar, photographic exactness of experimental photoqraphv. We demand and have premonition of, according to the allusions of Flaubert, Maupassant, Turgenev, Ibsen, new and as yet undisclosed worlds of impressionability. This thirst for the unexperienced, in pursuit of elusive nuances, of the dark and unconscious in our sensibility, is the characteristic feature of the coming ideal poetry. Earlier Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe said that the beautiful must somewhat amaze, must seem unexpected and extraordinary. French critics more or less successfully named this feature - impressionism. Such are the three major elements of the new art: a mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability. No positivistic conclusions, no utilitarian computation, but only a creative faith in something infinite and immortal can ignite the soul of man, create heroes, martyrs and prophets... People have need of faith, they need inspiration, they crave a holy madness in their heroes and martyrs. ("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")
Dmitry Merezhkovsky (Silver Age of Russian Culture (An Anthology))
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
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