"Mephistopheles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am Part of that Power, not understood, Which always wills the bad And always works the good. (Mephistopheles, in Faust.) ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... I am always hoping will be soon changed. So long, however, as the deadly liquor is sold in almost every store and cabin, the cause of disturbances will remain, and men's active brains, continually fired with poison as they are, will concoct schemes diabolical enough to shame a Mephistopheles. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... at the eyebrow, and added a little to the lobe of the ear to suggest materialism. Further consideration ensued. "Vigil's off, I'm afraid," said Harringay. "Why not Mephistopheles? But that's a bit too common. 'A Friend of the Doge,'—not so seedy. The armour won't do, though. Too Camelot. How about a scarlet robe and call him 'One of the Sacred College'? Humour in that, and an appreciation ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... something of the personality of Paganini, as you remember, except that he was a smaller man; long, gaunt, yellowish hands and the face of a haggard Mephistopheles. The critics quarrelled about him, as critics only quarrel about real genius, and while one school proclaimed that Tcheriapin had discovered an entirely new technique, a revolutionary system of violin playing, another school was equally positive in declaring ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that you can catch the full force of the idea—I must try, however. You have often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid character of the dress and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... pace with this inner development, this growth of moral consciousness; it lags behind. A condition of things arises where the living moral consciousness of the people conflicts with the established law, where legal forms are superannuated, but still exist, and Mephistopheles' scoffing ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... can open the caves of Jamschid and scale the ladder of Jacob: what use has it got if it land us in Islington or Shepherd's Bush? It is well known that Dr. Faustus, having been offered any ghost he chose, boldly selected, for Mephistopheles to convey, no less a person than Helena of Troy. Imagine if the familiar fiend had summoned up some Miss Jemima Jackson's Aunt ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... meanness—with the infidel as with the bigot. The sincere seeker for truth, whether he wander through the paths of unbelief or of faith, never forgets to love, never courts notoriety, and is neither a satirical court-fool nor a would-be Mephistopheles. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Rooster!" shouted young Ireland, encamped on the sidewalk to see the show, as Mephistopheles' red cock's feather skimmed up the stairs, and he left a pink domino at the ladies' dressing-room door, with the brief warning, "Now cut your own capers and leave me to mine," adding, as he paused a ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... MEPHISTOPHELES.—I will bind myself to your service here, and never sleep nor slumber at your call. When we meet on the other side, you shall do as much ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... magic, ghosts, sorcery, fairies, genii, and the like. What violates law is unnatural. What is so low down that it lies below law, as chaos before creation; or nebulous matter not yet beginning to obey the law of gravitation; or intelligences, like Mephistopheles or Satan, who have sunk so low in sin as to have lost the perception of right and wrong, is subternatural, below nature. What belongs to a religion above the laws of time and space, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... wish to drink your reeking pots of beer, whisky, wine, or other disgusting alcoholic liquors; if you wish to go to the theatre and listen to Mephistopheles, to the devil, to Marguerite, the dissolute hussy, and Doctor Faust, her foul accomplice; if you wish to gorge yourselves upon the oyster, scavenger of the sea, and the pig, scavenger of the earth—a scavenger ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... found in the higher mammals (ape, dog, elephant, horse) just as well as in most men; or else in the narrower sense, and then it is lacking in most men just as much as in the majority of animals. On the whole, we may still say of man's reason what Goethe's Mephistopheles said:— ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... fact is that I had started out for a mild little sort of celebration, apropos of nothing at all in particular, beginning with dinner at the Mephistopheles Restaurant, with a friend of mine. You know the place, perhaps— just on the edge of the automobile district ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... found the salon, known as the "blue salon," once hallowed by the occupancy of M. de Talleyrand. The window is still pointed out at which the eminent diplomatist used to sit surveying the crowds that thronged the Boulevards, with his usual fine and cynical smile, like a Mephistopheles of the nineteenth century. A little later, and one has a vision of a young man of short stature, elegantly dressed, who every day or two rides up to door or window, springs from his horse, calls for a particular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... again. I'm going up to my bedroom, you may come, too, if you like, because it commands a view of Church Road. I shouldn't sleep a wink unless I knew that he had gone in with her. It'll be precisely like Faust and Marguerite going into the house, and you and I are Mephistopheles and Martha. Come quick!" ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... have your joke, conte; but remember that if you place the countess in the position of Marguerite, you, as the giver of the jewels, naturally play the part of Mephistopheles." ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of figures in his "Temptation of Saint Anthony." Its flat abdomen, scalloped at the edges, rises into a twisted crook; its peaked head carries on the top two large, divergent, tusk-shaped horns; its sharp, pointed face, which can turn and look to either side, would fit the wily purpose of some Mephistopheles; its long legs have cleaver-like appendages at the joints, similar to the arm-pieces which the knights of old used to bear upon their elbows. Perched high upon the shanks of its four hind-legs, with its abdomen curled, its thorax raised ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... uniform binding in sets. Moods; Work; Hospital Sketches; A Modern Mephistopheles, and A Whisper in the Dark. 4 volumes. ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... and venerated, if not venerable, belief that devils could at any moment assume what form soever they might please—not troubling themselves further to inquire into the method of the operation. They could appear in the likeness of an ordinary human being, as Harpax[1] and Mephistopheles[2] do, creating thereby the most embarrassing complications in questions of identity; and if this belief is borne in mind, the charge of being a devil, so freely made, in the times of which we write, and before alluded to, against persons who performed ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Faust Lemaitre's genius took a new development in creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... dress. Red and black all over, something like Mephistopheles, you know, and a peaked hat with a bell at the top. Then he had a flute, of course, and a thin wire from his waist with a stuffed rat ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... their palate best. Whatever is rarest, most fantastic—things only dreamed of—the epicurean connoisseur has only to invoke, and, at a touch of the magic wand of Mammon, it is there before him. Wines, too,—what-not, est-est, tokay, and all the rest, flowing from the inexhaustible tap of the same Mephistopheles, with his golden gimlet. All the demons of luxury riot there, and at your nod ransack the earth for a flavor or a flask; and place it before you, almost before your wish is uttered. It is, indeed, the Mahomet's paradise of all true believers in the stomach, and worshippers ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... philanthropy, doubtless, at the bottom of it all; but a mocking spirit, a profound and pungent irony, are the manifest and prevailing characteristics. It is a philanthropy which has borrowed the manner of Mephistopheles. It is a modern Diogenes—in fact it is Diogenes Teufelsdrockh himself, surveying the Revolution from his solitary watch-tower, where he sits so near the eternal skies, that a whole generation of men, whirling off in wild Sahara waltz into infinite space, is but a spectacle, and a very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... is stagecraft but no drama at all; and then this logic nods its head and wearily talks about disillusionment. But the greenroom, dealing with its fragments, looks foolish when questioned, or wears the sneering smile of Mephistopheles; for it does not have the secret of unity, which is somewhere else. It is for faith to answer, "Unity comes to us from the One, and the One in ourselves opens the door and receives it with joy." The function of poetry and the arts is to remind us that the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... from Goethe, and was admirably performed, more especially the parts of "Mephistopheles" and "Margaret," in which Madame Dorval acts inimitably. This actress has great merit; and the earnestness of her manner, and the touching tones of her voice, give a great air of truth to her performances. The prison-scene was powerfully acted; and the madness of "Margaret" when stretched on ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... easily deceived in these matters, is it strange that in peculiar states of mind or body, we are so completely imposed on in others? At p. 353 we have the story on which Goethe has founded a singular exploit of Mephistopheles in the cellar ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... of it,' said the captain, with an impatient laugh. 'You are quite a Mephistopheles, Will—I ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... his assailant with a clearness and vigor of argument and a power of style with which few pens could cope. He was not only assailed with the rudest violence of newspaper denunciation, but he was alluded to by Whig speakers in scornful terms, while caricaturists represented him as the Mephistopheles of the Van Buren Administration, and Log Cabin Clubs roared offensive campaign songs at midnight before his house, terrifying his children by the discharges of a small cannon. Defeat stared him in the face, but he never quailed, but faced the storm of attack in every direction, and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... is producing a strong and satisfactory impression, and who feels in himself the ability to carry through the thing he has undertaken. With a sort of tingling double consciousness he felt at once the enthusiasm of injured virtue at last triumphant, and the mocking scorn of a Mephistopheles who bejuggles dupes too dull to withstand him. He looked around the meeting, and in a swift instant noted who of friends or foes were present; and even tried to calculate in that brief instant what would be the effect upon one and another of what he ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... glided around, Mephistopheles-like, gloating on the sinister changes that he would soon occasion. He was to succeed ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... spirit was left behind with Argemone. Hence loose reins and a looser seat. He rolled about like a tipsy man, holding on, in fact, far more by his spurs than by his knees, to the utter infuriation of Shiver-the-timbers, who kicked and snorted over the down like one of Mephistopheles's Demon-steeds. They had mounted the hill—the deer fled before them in terror—they neared the park palings. In the road beyond them the hounds were just killing their fox, struggling and growling in fierce groups for the red gobbets of fur, a panting, steaming ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the play suspended, for the Justice to make speeches. But the last scene was capital,—prodigious,—full of that dark, dismal, despairing energy you would look for in a dethroned spirit, baffled, like Mephistopheles, at the very moment his arm is outstretched, and his long, lean fingers are clutching at the shoulder of his victim. Being about to cross blades with his adversary, in a paroxysm of rage he plucks at the hilt of his sword, and stops ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... it. Then he realized that there was no window. He walked round it. The walls were filthily dirty, as everywhere else. Four pictures hung crookedly on the wall representing scenes from Faust. Marguerite with her box of jewels, the church scene, Siebel and his flowers, and Faust and Mephistopheles. The latter brought Tommy's mind back to Mr. Brown again. In this sealed and closed chamber, with its close-fitting heavy door, he felt cut off from the world, and the sinister power of the arch-criminal seemed more ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... everywhere, where there is air and moisture, and a temperature which is not always below freezing point, though even eternal frost does not exclude life entirely, as is proved by the existence of the glacier flea, showing that even in the icy coverings of the Alps life still is possible. Mephistopheles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... deep sea." Deep and pure and strong and adorable always and terrible and pitiless on occasion as the sea is the great soul of the glorious hero to whom she has given herself; and what likeness of man's enemy from Satan down to Mephistopheles could be matched for danger and for dread against the good bluff soldierly trustworthy figure of honest Iago? The rough license of his tongue at once takes warrant from his good soldiership and again gives warrant for his honesty: so that in a double sense it does him yeoman's ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he had learnt from Wills's "Mephistopheles" came into his mind as he crouched there. "I feel like a cat on the tiles," he whispered to himself. It was far better than he had expected—this adventurous exhilaration. He was sorry for all poor men to whom burglary ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... convey to the modern scholar no idea but that of intense obsoleteness,—Ramus's Definitions, Burgersdicius's Logic, Heereboord's Meletemata; and for Seniors, on Saturday, Ames's Medulla. This is such a curriculum as Mephistopheles, in his character of Magister, might have recommended in irony to the student who sought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... born, it is sometimes made, despite what the copy-books assure us to the contrary. The wit and irony of the man and painter come both from Berlin and from his Jewish ancestry. He looks like a benevolent Mephistopheles, and is kindness personified ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... topazes or golden splendors of the "Paradise"; but is stern, disdainful, silent, waving from before his face all contact with the filthy gloom. His Lucifer is no flickering, gentlemanly, philosophic man of the world like Goethe's Mephistopheles, nor ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Herr Wagner passed unnoticed. He sat behind and pretended to go to sleep. He thought everything most mediocre. The opera was "Faust," which I thought was beautifully put on the stage, with Madame Miolan Carvalho as Marguerite and Faure as Mephistopheles. They both sang and acted to perfection; but Wagner pooh-poohed at them and everything else. Abscheulich and graesslich alternated in his condemning sentences. Nothing ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... or Desdemona. The parish clerk is perhaps a fit type of all that was least poetical in the old social order of the country, and virtue which succumbs to the temptation of taking two shillings out of a plate scarcely wants a Mephistopheles to overcome it. We may perhaps think that the apologetic note which the excellent Crabbe inserts at the end of his poem, to the effect that he did not mean by it to represent mankind as 'puppets of an overpowering destiny,' or 'to deny the doctrine of seducing ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... feet she would love him; if not, she would make her revenge tell. He should not wed Vaura Vernon, if a woman's tongue sharp as a two-edged sword could cut their lives apart. She would be content to repeat the little act of barter that the young man did for Marguerite with Mephistopheles, for Lionel's love. She had learned and practised society's creed, and paid its tolls; surely now she was free to have her pets, and love them too; whether it were a poodle dog or a man, whether it ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... try—What an extraordinary irrelevance! I have not read Goethe lately. Mephistopheles, I suppose. But I did ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... sensualism of enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonished at the kind of incident he has selected for romance." The phraseology, he finds, is not offensive: but this is eminently diabolical, for "the romance never hints the shocking words that belong to its things, but, like Mephistopheles, hints that the arch-fiend himself is a very tolerable sort of person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil." Where, within the covers of the book, could the deluded man have found this doctrine urged? Only once, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Deduced from Cornwall's guary miracles,— From immemorial custom there They raise a turfy theatre! When from a passage underground, By frequent crowds encompassed round, Out leaps some little Mephistopheles, Who e'en of all the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... said, "could understand till now the instinctive dread with which poor Margaret, in Faust, shrinks from the hateful presence of Mephistopheles. I now feel it in myself. The dislike and suspicion I first felt for that man—Smith, or whatever else he may call himself—has grown into literal detestation and terror. I hate him—I am afraid of him—I never knew what anguish of mind ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Retzsch's drawing of destiny in the shape of Mephistopheles playing at chess with man for his soul, a game in which we may imagine the clever adversary making a feint of unintended moves so as to set the beguiled mortal on carrying his defensive pieces away from ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... others, more and more. Reader, keep them well in mind: I had rather not speak of them again. They are essential to our Story; but they are afflictively vain, contrary to the Laws of Fact; and can, now or henceforth, in nowise be. My friend, it was not Beelzebub, nor Mephistopheles, nor Autolyeus-Apollo that built this world and us; it was Another. And you will get your crown well rapped, M. le Marechal, for so forgetting that fact! France is an extremely pretty creature; but this of making France the supreme Governor and God's-Vicegerent of Nations, is, was, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... more high sounding. Besides she's just like Mephistopheles in 'Faust.' She doesn't speak right out, only whispers and suggests. Innuendo is the word, isn't it? Sometimes I'm really frightened ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... "That Mephistopheles on horseback, named Philippe Bridau," said Bixiou, as they mounted the staircase, "has sailed his boat cleverly to get rid of his wife. You know our old friend Lousteau? well, Philippe paid him a thousand francs a month to keep Madame Bridau in the society of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... instance occurred to his memory." We can see the whole scene at a glance, the stolid unconsciousness of Sancho and the perplexity of his master, upon whose perception the incongruity has just forced itself. This is Sancho's mission throughout the book; he is an unconscious Mephistopheles, always unwittingly making mockery of his master's aspirations, always exposing the fallacy of his ideas by some unintentional ad absurdum, always bringing him back to the world of fact and commonplace by force ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... same disease as Pigasov's,' observed Rudin, 'the desire of being original. One affects to be a Mephistopheles—the other a cynic. In all that, there is much egoism, much vanity, but little truth, little love. Indeed, there is even calculation of a sort in it. A man puts on a mask of indifference and indolence so that some one will be sure to ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... he came in contact with some. Their fervour awakened some faint interest in him, and now, as weary of playing at Mephistopheles as he was of playing at Faust, he followed the occupation of his new friends. But his attempts at reformation were vain, they wore out the soul, and left it only more hopeless than before; and he remembered John Norton's words, that faith is a gift from ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... during which she doubtless benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his marital venture, with a similar result. And in this, Fate sends back a fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton's pamphlets on divorce: Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the blunders ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... wine, and no asp hid among the roses; but Nemesis had been an unseen spectator of all his thoughtless actions, and now she came to demand her just dues. He felt somewhat as Faust must have felt when Mephistopheles suggested a visit to Hades, in repayment of those years of magic youth and magic power. So long ago it seemed since he had married Rosanna Moore, that he almost persuaded himself that it had been only a dream—a pleasant dream, with a disagreeable ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... present time: people have been content with reading his early poems, and with seeking Byron in "Childe Harold" or in the heroes of his Oriental poems; which is about as just as to look for Shakspeare in Iago, Milton in Satan, Goethe in Mephistopheles, or Lamartine in the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Edwards, who is now confined in a padded cell in the Tombs, is different. He maintains that the two cats are one and the same, and that the body of the beast is occupied by that ubiquitous spirit who is variously known as Satan, Hornie, Cloots, Mephistopheles, ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... but a Note at the end of the Volume informs me that a much greater Wit than I was in the same plight—even Coleridge; who admires the perfect German Diction, the Songs, Choruses, etc. (which are such parts as cannot be translated into Prose); he also praises Margaret and Mephistopheles; but thinks Faust himself dull, and great part of the Drama flat and tiresome; and the whole Thing not a self-evolving Whole, but an unconnected Series of Scenes: all which are parts that can be judged of from Translation, by Goethe's own Authority. I find a great want of Invention and Imagination ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... bucket," Di became prophetic with Mahomet, belligerent with Cromwell, and made the French Revolution a veritable Reign of Terror to her family. Goethe and Schiller alternated like fever and ague; Mephistopheles became her hero, Joan of Arc her model, and she turned her black eyes red over Egmont and Wallenstein. A mild attack of Emerson followed, during which she was lost in a fog, and her sisters rejoiced inwardly when she emerged informing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Madame de Maintenon's, sat in Colbert's place; gone were Turenne and Conde and Luxembourg; the armies of the descendant of St. Louis were led by the Duke of Vendome, a foul lecher, whose inhuman vices went far to justify the gibe of Mephistopheles that men use their reason "um thierischer ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the Symphonic Poems, more nearly resembles the ordinary symphony in that it is in three distinct movements—with pauses between—which stand, respectively, for the three chief characters in Goethe's drama: Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. In the Faust Symphony the principle of transformation or metamorphosis of themes is of such importance that it may be defined as their rhythmic, melodic and harmonic modification for the purpose of changing the meaning to correspond with ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... venomous satires called "The Scourge of Villanie," rough in versification, condensed in thought, tainted in matter, evincing a cankered more than a caustic spirit, and producing an effect at once indecent and inhuman. To prove that this scourging of villany, which would have put Mephistopheles to the blush, was inspired by no respect for virtue, he soon followed it up with a poem so licentious that, before it was circulated to any extent, it was suppressed by order of Archbishop Whitgift, and nearly all the copies destroyed. A writer could not be thus dishonored without being brought ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... motives, appealed to or awakened by the presentation of the play, are justified. Where this is wanting the true leading and the definite justification are wanting. Goethe failed in this in his Faust, resourceful and far-seeing though he was—he failed because a certain sympathy is awakened for Mephistopheles in being, so to say, chivied out of his bargain, when he had complied with the terms of the contract by Faust; and Gounod in his opera does exactly for "immediate dramatic effect," what we hold it would be necessary to do for R. L. Stevenson. Goethe, with his casuistries ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... double-thinking Negative, infinitely elusive, verily the old Serpent. But the supreme attempt is the modern poetic one, made by Goethe in his Faust poem, in which is embodied anew the mighty Negative, who is now none other than the devil, Mephistopheles. Thus the last world-poet reaches across the ages and touches elbows with the first world-poet in ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... scene of Gounod's most popular opera Mephistopheles conjures up visions of Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy to beguile the jaded interest of Faust. The list reads almost like a catalogue of the operas of Massenet whose fine talent was largely given to the celebration of the famous ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and devil! What Mephistopheles is in me I feel far the first time in this hour, and I feel it, O God, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... are so exquisite, that all Europe, nay, the Pope would be inflamed to behold them. The passage is omitted, though worthy of the satiric vein of Mephistopheles. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sense of strength. I said to myself that without this woman I was but an imperfect being, but that with her I could accomplish everything to which I should set my hand. Like the great Doctor, when he thought he had cheated Mephistopheles at last, I could have cried aloud to the fleeting moment, Verweile ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... vast dome of baldness. Immediately under his eyes his cheekbones had so high a colour that they might have been painted scarlet; three black tufts, two on the upper lip and one under the lower, seemed to touch up the face with the fierce moustaches of Mephistopheles. His eyes had that "dancing madness" in them which Stevenson saw in the Gaelic eyes of Alan Breck; but he sometimes distorted the expression by screwing a monstrous monocle into one of them. A man more unmistakable ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... He went through the world, familiar with the ways of princes and peers, priests and peasants, travelling in many lands, exhausting the resources of art and learning, seeing through the sins and shams and sorrows of life, and laughing at everything, like a good-natured, large-hearted Mephistopheles. But he had never learned the true philosophy of joyousness in the sincere love of nature, the deep phases of humanity, and the affluence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for the time, with new energies. Our thoughts take wings rapid as our steed. We feel as if his fleetness and boundless impulses were for the moment our own. We laugh; we exult; we shout for very joy. We cry out with Mephistopheles, but in anything but a sardonic mood, "What I enjoy with spirit, is it the less my own on that account? If I can pay for six horses, are not their powers mine! I drive along, and am a proper man, as if I had four-and-twenty legs!" These ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mephistopheles in scarlet silk, whose high shoulders lent him added height, had joined them. His peaked cap and feather sparkled with lurid points of fire. Countess Sagan turned ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... England he had entered on board of a man-of-war. Having no name, it was necessary to christen him on the ship's books, and the first lieutenant, who had entered him, struck with his remarkable expression of countenance, and being a German scholar, had named him Mephistopheles Faust, from whence his Christian name had been razed to Mesty. Mesty in other points was an eccentric character; at one moment, when he remembered his lineage, he was proud to excess, at others he was grave and almost sullen—but when nothing either in daily occurrences or in his mind ran contrary, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... which had waned mantled in a full flood. Shosshi stood breathless, gazing half suspiciously, half credulously at his strictly honorable Mephistopheles. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of outraged national rights!!! Thus Richard, Duke of Gloucester, appears with prayer-book and rosary on the terrace of the castle, thus Mephistopheles dons the mask of lawyer and philosopher, thus Iscariot kisses the Saviour.—"My German Fatherland," by PASTOR TOLZIEN, quoted in H.A.H., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... make up—thank you!" A shudder ran through her, and she began drawing on her gloves. "You taught me a lot, you know. I ought to be quite grateful. Oh, you've grown a little beard! D'you think that improves you? It makes you look rather like Mephistopheles, I think." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... patience with the raucous voice and bad enunciation of the son; but his sketch of the actor as Sardanapalus (1853), "with a wine-cup of the period," sets on record one of the most perfect archaeological revivals that had ever been seen on the English stage. But it was Kean's "Mephistopheles" (1854) that afforded Punch his chance, for the actor's realisation was so wide of Goethe's creation that it was a Frenchified demon, played as a comic character. Punch admitted the beauty of the production, but said that "as a piece of show and mechanism (wires unseen) it will ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... theological professor. Nothing could be more ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron for a dramatic poem in which some of his characters were fiends rather than men. We have no more right to say that he was an infidel because Cain or Lucifer blasphemed, than to say that Goethe was an atheist because Mephistopheles denied God. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... of modern trenches is a far cry, and Ares, God of Battles, may well yawn at the entertainment with which the Demon of War is providing him. But the spectator of this grim "revue" lacks something of the patience of its creator, and our Mephistopheles, marking the god's protest, will doubtless hurry the scene and diversify it with new devilries to restore his interest. Indeed, that has happened since Raemaekers made ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... end was monopolised by the door that admitted them, the other by a window from floor to ceiling. And this window was in two great sheets of ruby glass, so that Pocket looked down red-hot iron steps into a crimson garden, and therefrom to his companion dyed from head to foot like Mephistopheles. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... upon a life of crime rather than take a chance of going there when they die. I think there is a special place in Hades, where the mannish woman will be made to wear a mother-hubbard and let down her back hair. If there isn't, Mephistopheles don't understand ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... the depth of it, expressed by one passage of Goethe's in the end of the second part of Faust;—the notable one that follows the song of the Lemures, when the angels enter to dispute with the fiends for the soul of Faust. They enter singing—"Pardon to sinners and life to the dust." Mephistopheles hears them first, and exclaims to his troop, "Discord I hear, and filthy jingling"—"Mis-toene hoere ich: garstiges Geklimper." This, you see, is the extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host begin strewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... teach womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!"—with which Christian advice Mr. Seguin slapped his pupil on the shoulder, and disappeared, like a modern Mephistopheles, in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... for the gentleman above mentioned. It was a covert feeling, but no less deadly on that account; and while it never led him into any extravagances, it was of force sufficient to account for many a secret misfortune occurring to that gentleman. Now if I can prove that he is the Mephistopheles who whispered insinuations into the ear of our blind Faust, I may strike a fact that will lead me out of ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... but consolation. I believe you are Mephistopheles himself in disguise; for ever since I signed that diabolical compact you made me, I have been in a state of terror, agitation, misgiving, and misery—and I thank and bless you for it; for these thorns and nettles they lacerate me, and make me live. They break the dull, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... to throw oneself from a height took possession of me. Almost a physical urging of the body, as if some hidden Mephistopheles not only poured into the soul his hellish advice to end your life, but pushed you to the brink. As never before the evil desire to fall from that terrible height attacked me, and the world became a black dizziness. Struggling, I threw out my hand; the unconscious grip upon a stunted fern, itself ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... could no longer be found, and then Kelley definitely determined to break the partnership. According to one account, he informed Dee that, for the sake of his immortal soul, he could no longer have dealings with the spirits; that they were spirits not of good but of evil, and Mephistopheles was their master; and that, did he continue to traffic with them, Mephistopheles would soon have him, body and soul. Another version—given by the astrologer, William Lilly, who is said to have been consulted by the ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Paris; in Rome you caused me to be starved and robbed by Luigi Vampa and his brigands; then with the malevolent magnanimity of an arch-demon you sent me forth into the world a fugitive and an outcast. Count of Monte-Cristo, Edmond Dantes, low-born sailor of Marseilles, modern Mephistopheles as you are, I will be even with you! You have had your vengeance; now you shall feel mine! Here in the Grecian Archipelago, on the Island of Salmis, I will torture you through your dearest affections, and grind you to ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... desire to ruin an immortal spirit. When therefore the siren would allure a human creature from the path of virtue, the inspiration of God utters a deep and bitter curse against her. But when the cold-blooded Mephistopheles endeavors to sophisticate the reason, to debauch the judgment, to sear the conscience; when the temptation is addressed to the intellect, and the desire of the tempter is to overthrow the entire religious creed of a human being,—perhaps a youth just entering upon that hazardous enterprise of life ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... as if the Man-in-the-Moon had somehow secretly put up the ships to their contest, and in the depths of his malignant old soul was not unpleased to see how well his charms worked. There stood the grinning Man-in-the-Moon, his head just dodging into view over the rim of the sea:—Mephistopheles ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... his reign. Utterly unscrupulous, with everything to gain for himself and his party, and with absolutely nothing to lose but a life which he took good care to save by avoiding danger, he insinuated himself into the confidence of Maximilian, and became the Mephistopheles of the last act in the Mexican drama. Having but recently risen to the confidential position he now occupied near the person of the Emperor, the latter's abdication was obviously against his interests. When the ministers threatened ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... N. Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Ahriman[obs3], Belial; Samael, Zamiel, Beelzebub, the Prince of the Devils. the tempter[1]; the evil one, the evil spirit; the Adversary; the archenemy; the author of evil, the wicked one, the old Serpent; the Prince of darkness, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... just caught the words in the wild flash of their flight. Never before had he used her name in that way. He rode his unsaddled horse with all the ease of another Mephistopheles; and what delighted the girl was that he seemed to count on her riding her course ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the hearer to tears—this wifely faith. Surely the saint that lay behind the Mephistopheles in his face must have as real an existence, if the woman who knew him only as man, undazzled by the glitter of his fame, unwearied by his long sickness, found him thus without ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the earth in which he believes at all. Dim, mystic, childish, with open mouth and staring eyes, the German sees the whole phantasmagoria of the nether world pass before him: keen, biting, sarcastic—egotistic as a beauty, and cold-hearted as Mephistopheles—the Frenchman walks among his figures in a gilded drawing room; probes their spirits, breaks their hearts, ruins their reputation, and seems to have a profound contempt for any reader who is so carried away by his power as to waste ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... and tossed the goblet down into the upraised hand of a handsome, but dissolute-looking man, who, attired in the theatrical idea of Mephistopheles, appeared to be a ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... It was our favourite opera—"Faust." It was the one piece that we could agree on. Looking back since, I have wondered at the coincidence. The old myth of age to youth and the subcurrent of sin with its stalking, laughing, subtle Mephistopheles. It is strange that we should have gone to this one opera on this one evening. I recall our coming out of the theatre; our minds thrilling to the music and the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... under it which is supposed to be the name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church. Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity will be able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found himself before this memorial tribute, on the inside,—you know he goes to church sometimes, if ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his preface to Prometheus Unbound that "the character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry, which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure." Goethe's Mephistopheles is less dignified than Milton's Satan, but he is full of energy and intellect, and if Faust eventually escapes from his clutches it is only by a miracle. At any rate, Mephistopheles is not an object of derision; on the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Philology, lst series, p. 288.] Littre has evidently little confidence in the explanation commonly offered of the 'Salic' law, namely, that it was the law which prevailed on the banks of the Saal. [Footnote: For a full and learned treatment of the various derivations of 'Mephistopheles' which have been proposed, and for the first appearance of the name in books, see Ward's ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... awakens to find that he has been robbed of his hoard, that unaccountably the best part of the cake has been eaten, that perhaps indeed only a few desperate crumbs remain. A bleak laughter blends now with that once luxurious melancholy. There is a song at our window, terribly like the mockery of Mephistopheles. Our blood runs cold. We listen in sudden fear. It is life ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Mephistopheles, as he glanced around with a triumphant expression on his swarthy face, and ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... curtains hanging from a pole, with various ornaments and pictures of noticeable appearance, also linoleum for the floor, had finally been gathered together and were treasured for a time as household gods indeed. In those days there was hardly a commandment in the decalogue that Mephistopheles might not have induced Mrs. Phillips to commit by judicious praise of her "room." Her occasional "visitors" were ushered into it with an air of pride that was alone enough to illuminate the dingy, musty little place. Between ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... more gaiety than malice; not the least like Mephistopheles. He is the companion of Cle'ofas, whom he carries through the air, and shows him the inside of houses, where they see what is being done in private or secrecy without being seen. Although Asmodeus is not malignant, yet with all his wit, acuteness, and playful malice, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... to a certain point in a certain highway, where the road is smooth and hard, and undulates up and down like a Coney Island chute for many miles, he leans forward and puts his chin close to the back of the chauffeur, who is French, and looks like Mephistopheles. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... be there to decide for you, child, or you'll be snapped up by the first adventurer that comes along," declared Nora. "Don't trust him if he has a mustache. 'Daring Dick of the Black Gang' had a little twisted mustache like Mephistopheles in 'Faust'." ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... through the Werther period, and tried a little Faust—of which experience he spoke to his Marguerite as if it had included an acquaintance with Mephistopheles, Blocksburg, and Auerbach's wine-cellar—he now felt that he was a Wilhelm Meister, serving his apprenticeship to the great masters of life. As she knew the truth of his small sins and honest repentance, Daisy only ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... have learnt that no mentally sick man ever yet was cured save by the welling-up of a flood of emotional energy in his own soul. He might also have seen that Parsifal is as much the spirit that denies as Mephistopheles. But these points, and many others, may go as, comparatively, nothings. The first act of "Parsifal" is unsurpassable, the second is an anti-climax, and the third, excepting the repentance of Kundry, which is pathetic, and strikes one as true, a more saddening anti-climax. There ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... novels in uniform binding in sets Moods Work Hospital Sketches A Modern Mephistopheles and A Whisper in the Dark 4 volumes ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he had "neither time nor inclination" for reply, and that a mutual understanding with Loofs was impossible because their scientific views were entirely different. Could anything be more suggestive of the words of Mephistopheles: ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... disciple of the same school: he inspires me with the strongest antipathy I ever felt for a human being. Insignificant and disagreeable is his appearance, he looks as if all the bile under heaven had found its way into his complexion, and all the infernal irony of a Mephistopheles into his turned-up nose and insolent curled lip. He is, he says he is, an atheist, a materialist, a sensualist: the pains he takes to deprave and degrade his nature, render him so disgusting, that I could not even speak in his presence; I dreaded lest he should enter into conversation ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Berenice, meditating, as he was, a course which should be destructive to Braxmar, was gentle, courteous, serenely thoughtful. Like a true Mephistopheles he was waiting, surveying Mrs. Carter and Berenice, who were seated in front chairs clad in such exotic draperies as opera-goers affect—Mrs. Carter in pale-lemon silk and diamonds; Berenice in purple and old-rose, with ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... to yours to know if you dine with Lord Lilburne. He told me he had asked you. I have just left him. And, by the sofa of Mephistopheles, there was the prettiest Margaret you ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these latest thousand years or later. Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest:— For my part, I am but a mere spectator, And gaze where'er the palace or the hovel is, Much in the mode of Goethe's Mephistopheles; ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the Gamin de Paris, and as the griping old miser in the Fille de l'Avare, he is equally excellent. His countenance is remarkable. A clever critic has said of him, that he has the physiognomy of a Mephistopheles and the eye of an angel. The observation is singularly happy. There is something Mephistophelian in the curve of his nose, and in the lines around his mouth. His command of expression is extraordinary; his eyes, especially, alternately flash fire and grow dim with melancholy or tenderness. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... horses and carriage to persons such as Traugott described, and even at the town gates he could learn nothing for certain;—in short, Berklinger had disappeared as if he had flown away on the mantle[9] of Mephistopheles. ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... somewhat the look of a Mephistopheles—a demon then very much in vogue,—especially when he laughed, his laughter being full of sardonic reserves. If Delsarte's mode of proselyting was almost always gentle, affectionate, adapted to the spirit he aspired to conquer, that ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... with its blue silk counterpane and its embroidered cushion at the foot of the bed; and her boudoir, which looked to the Vatican, was full of vases of malachite and the skins of wild animals, and had a bronze clock on the chimney-piece set in a statue of Mephistopheles. The only other occupant of her house, besides her servants, was a distant kinswoman, called her aunt, and known to familiars as the Countess Betsy; but in the studio below, which was connected with the living rooms by a circular staircase, and hung round with masks, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... height of her career. Her meeting with Faust in the Kermesse scene was accomplished with modesty that almost became fright. She nearly danced the jewel song and embraced the tenor with passion in the love duet. In the church scene, overcome with terror at the sight of Mephistopheles, she flung her prayer book across the stage.... Her appearance was almost shocking and the first lines of the part of Marguerite, "Non monsieur, je ne suis demoiselle, ni belle" had a merciless application. However, the audience received her with kindness, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... finger. He felt almost beside himself—and quite powerless. For he knew the guard of the train would jeer too. It is not so easy to interfere with honest third-class Bolognesi in Bologna station, even if they have taken another man's seat. Powerless, his brow knitted, and looking just like Mephistopheles with his high forehead and slightly arched nose, Mephistopheles in a rage, he hauled down Aaron's bag and handed it to Angus. So they transferred themselves to the first-class carriage, while the fat man and his party in the third-class watched in jeering, triumphant ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... grinning silhouettes of man, types altogether unknown to serious-minded antiquity, although they originated in classic Italy. It is the grotesque, lastly, which, colouring the same drama with the fancies of the North and of the South in turn, exhibits Sganarelle capering about Don Juan and Mephistopheles crawling about Faust. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... lived through a long life devoted to the acquirement of learning and to hard work as a scholar, without having his soul-hunger appreciably relieved, is dissatisfied and in his disappointment wishes to be released from this life, which has grown to be a burden to him. At this moment Mephistopheles, the incarnation of the Evil One, appears and persuades him to try life in a new shape. The old and learned Doctor has only known it in theory, Mephisto will now show it to him in practice and in all the splendor ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... overshadowed by black and all but straight brows, terminating in two little tufts, which give his countenance a strange and, as some might think, an almost sardonic expression. Altogether, it strikes me as being the face of a cynical yet not ill-natured or malicious Mephistopheles. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... Besides she's just like Mephistopheles in 'Faust.' She doesn't speak right out, only whispers and suggests. Innuendo is the word, isn't it? Sometimes I'm really frightened ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... which come from the hooks of the ready-made clothing dealer. All these things were carefully brushed, and so was the shiny and misshapen hat. They harmonized with each other, even to the black gloves which covered the hands of this subaltern Mephistopheles, whose whole anterior life may be summed up in a ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac |
