"Mephistophelian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where, to gratify a pleasant whim, the picturesque form of acquaintance is for the nonce preferred to the useful, the spirits being so brisk as to swerve from strict attention to the select and sequent gifts of heaven, blood and acres, to consider for an idle moment the subversive Mephistophelian endowment, brains. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... possibility of a soldiers' revolt in the capital. The arrival of a first detachment of the savage hordes of General Chang Hsun added Byzantine touches to a picture already lurid with a sickened ruler and the Mephistophelian figure of that ruler's ame damnee, the Secretary Liang Shih-yi, vainly striving to transmute paper into silver, and find the wherewithal to prevent a sack of the capital. It was said at the time that Liang Shih-yi had won over his master to trying one last ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... silly elderly scamp, with all the will to be a villain but not endowed with the brains requisite for that line of life. Thus, the Author, unconsciously, has created him. But Mr. HARE invests this feather-headed scoundrel with Iago-ish and Mephistophelian characteristics, that go very near to make the audience believe that, after all, there is something in the part, and also in the plot. But the part is only a snowman, and melts away under the sunlight of criticism. Miss KATE RORKE is charming. It is a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... contention—the ruin is a place of rare charm. Not easily can one see relics of Roman, Hebrew and Norman life crushed into so small a space, welded together by the massive yet fair architecture of the Benedictines, and interpenetrated, at the same time, with a Mephistophelian spirit of modern indifference. Of cynical insouciance; for although this is a "national monument," nothing whatever is done in the way of repairs. Never a month passes without some richly carven block of stonework toppling down into the weeds, [Footnote: ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... dangerous, full of blind fences and yawning ditches, deep enough and wide enough to swallow up any horse and his rider who might fail to clear them. Fortunately, however, I escaped disaster, and for the greater part of the run I was close to the gentleman with the Mephistophelian face and Tom Rawlings, who acted as his pilot. Tom rode well, of course—it was his business—but no better than his master, whose horse, besides being a big jumper, was as clever as a cat, flying the ditches like a bird, and clearing the blindest fences ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... another incident at Erfurt more pregnant of ultimate changes than any of these. Thanks to Fouche's Mephistophelian insinuations, and the details which leaked out concerning the quarrels between Queen Hortense, representing her mother, and the Grand Duchess of Berg, representing the Bonapartes, the subject of Napoleon's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane |
