"Mephistopheles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... length. One 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
... house together, leading a life of tranquil happy days. Friends and books and flowers! It was, we said, a good world, and I, simpleton,—pretty and dainty as Margaret was,—deemed it would go on forever. But, alas! one day came a Faust into our garden,—a good Faust, with no friend Mephistopheles,—and took Margaret from me. It is but a month since they were married, and the rice still lingers in the crevices of the pathway down to the quaint old iron-work gate. Yes! they have gone off to spend their honeymoon, and Margaret has written to me twice to say how happy they are together in the ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... like this, sir. That night, M. Maniera and his lady, the jewelers in the Rue Mogador, were sitting in the front of the box, with their great friend, M. Isidore Saack, sitting behind Mme. Maniera. Mephistopheles was singing"—Mme. Giry here burst into song herself—"'Catarina, while you play at sleeping,' and then M. Maniera heard a voice in his right ear (his wife was on his left) saying, 'Ha, ha! Julie's not playing at sleeping!' His wife ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... had 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
... entered—she always does—but 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. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... feeling of satisfaction and triumph at the revelations the woman had made; added to which was something that might be termed shrewd; ironical, and derisive. In fact, his face bore no bad resemblance to that of Mephistopheles, as represented in Retsch's powerful conception and delineation of it in his illustration of Goethe's "Faust," so inimitably translated by our ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... perplex me:—not so D**, another 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 ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... protector 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
... and heroic. Shelley, in fact, complained in 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 contrary, the laugh is generally ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... 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 a touch of sympathy on the unsubstantial pageants he has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... and raged violently for a time; for, being anything but a "passive 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
... was the Mephistopheles of his Doctor Faustus. No doubt, Marlowe was fascinated by the beauty and grace of the boy-actor, and lured him away from the Blackfriars Theatre, that he might play the Gaveston of his Edward II. That Shakespeare had the legal right to retain ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... very personation of animal sensual life. He would have been to Faust a more dangerous tempter than Mephistopheles. There was no sneer on HIS lip at the pleasures which animated his voice. To one awaking to a sense of the vanities in knowledge, this reckless ignorant joyousness of temper was a worse corrupter than all the icy mockeries of a learned Fiend. But when Paolo took his leave, with a promise ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... such as is condemned not less by the rules of good taste than by those of morality, is not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit. We have here Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, "graceful and humane," but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistopheles. We find ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate, impudent and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandaemonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I am so, from the vehemence with which I urged upon him the imperative duty of snatching so young a creature from the doom to which she seemed inevitably delivered over. All their answers reminded me of Mephistopheles' reply to Faust's frantic pity for Gretchen, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... struggle for supremacy when—by a rarely fortunate chance —I am alone in my armchair waiting for Adolphe. One, I would wager, comes from Eugene Delacroix's Faust which I have on my table. Mephistopheles speaks, that terrible aide who guides the swords so dexterously. He leaves the engraving, and places himself diabolically before me, grinning through the hole which the great artist has placed under his nose, and gazing at me with that eye whence fall rubies, diamonds, carriages, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... to her 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 were a trip to her pet club at London of the cane ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... of fact, it may be almost unnecessary to mention that no such idea had occurred to worthy Mr. Fladgate, who, though he certainly was anxious to secure the book if he could, by any legitimate means, was anything but a publishing Mephistopheles. He had an object, however, in making this last appeal for confidence, as will appear immediately; but, innocent as it was, Mark's imagination conjured up a bland demon tempting him to some act of unspeakable perfidy; ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... life exists 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 may ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... impossible. They "vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers," as Troilus knew. Mephistopheles exclaims: ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Faust—yearns for youth. He gets the youth, makes the devil's acquaintance, sells his soul to the devil for the devil's help. In the opera the devil is politely called Mephistopheles. Everybody is beautifully dressed, from the devil and Faust, the peasant girls and the ballet dancers, to the old grandmothers, with their diamonds and ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... assiduous and patient education. The primary fountains of our Nation's wealth are not in fields and forests and mines, but in the free schools, churches, and printing presses. Ignorance breeds misery, vice, and crime. Mephistopheles was a cultured devil, but he is the exception. History knows no illiterate seer or sage or saint. No Dante or Shakespeare ever had ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... it not be better, as co-operating with you more effectually in your kind promise to forget the 'printer's error' in my blotted proof, to send me back that same 'proof,' if you have not inflicted proper and summary justice on it? When Mephistopheles last came to see us in this world outside here, he counselled sundry of us 'never to write a letter,—and never to burn one'—do you know that? But I never mind what I am told! Seriously, I am ashamed.... I shall next ask a servant ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... leaps up and impulsively embraces me. At that instant, Mashenka's maman appears in the doorway of the arbour. . . . She makes a face as though in alarm, and saying "sh-sh" to someone with her, vanishes like Mephistopheles through ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Giaour and the Pasha," "The Massacre of the Bishop of Liege," and similar subjects. Goethe in his conversations with Eckerman expressed great admiration of Delacroix's interpretations of scenes in "Faust" (the brawl in Auerbach's cellar, and the midnight ride of Faust and Mephistopheles to deliver Margaret from prison). Goethe hoped that the French artist would go on and reproduce the whole of "Faust," and especially the sorceress' kitchen and the scenes on the Brocken. Other painters of the romantic school were Camille Roqueplan, who treated motives drawn ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Dante Symphony. I have read somewhere that Liszt used pages to produce an effect which Berlioz accomplished in the apparition of Mephistopheles in Faust with three notes. This comparison is unjust. Berlioz's happy discovery is a work of genius and he alone could have invented it. But the sudden appearance of the Devil is one thing and the depiction of Hell quite another. Berlioz tried ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... 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, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... may be typified by it, producible in Germany; especially if we think how the more delicate uses of Rosin, as indispensable to the Fiddle-bow, have developed themselves, from the days of St. Elizabeth of Marburg to those of St. Mephistopheles of Weimar. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... gusto with which the Eastern, as well as the Western tale-teller describes his scoundrels and villains whilst his good men and women are mostly colourless and unpicturesque. So Satan is the true hero of Paradise-Lost and by his side God and man are very ordinary; and Mephistopheles is much better ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... any self-respecting woman like such a man? His every glance is an insult. With his polished manners and sardonic smile he reminds one of Mephistopheles." ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... of monumental thematicism for lyric emotion. In MS. is also a prelude to Goethe's "Faust" for full orchestra. It has very definite leading motives, which include "Faust's Meditations," "Visions of Margarethe," "Evil" and "Love" (almost inversions of each other), "Mephistopheles," and the like. The strife of these elements is managed with great cleverness, ending beatifically with the motive of Gretchen dying away in ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... uniform binding in sets Moods Work Hospital Sketches A Modern Mephistopheles and A Whisper in the Dark 4 ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... she call him at will by looking at him? Could it be that—? It made her shiver to think of it.—And who was that strange horseman who passed Mr. Bernard at dusk the other evening, looking so like Mephistopheles galloping hard to be in season at the witches' Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mummers are in season. They are called "Julebukker," or Christmas goblins. They invariably appear after dark, and in masks and fancy dresses. A host may therefore have to entertain in the course of the season, a Punch, Mephistopheles, Charlemagne, Number, Nip, Gustavus, Oberon, and whole companies of other fanciful and historic characters; but, as their antics are performed in silence, they are not particularly ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... 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 flaw ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... then realised that the remarkable being who had caused the commotion was none other than the devil. Yielding to an irresistible impulse, but without really knowing what he was doing, the Vicomte whipped out a pistol, and, pointing at Mephistopheles, fired. In an instant, fire and witches vanished, and all was darkness ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... goes out in it with Dolly every Sunday. When he arrives 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
... spirit of love, and a spirit of rest, as if breathing from St. John the Evangelist, had seemed to mould the harmonies of that earliest stage in my childhood which had just vanished; but now, on the other hand, some wicked Harlequin Mephistopheles was apparently commissioned to vex my eyes and plague my heart, through the next succession of two or three years: a worm was at the roots of life. Yet, in this, perhaps, there lurked a harsh beneficence. If, because the great vision of love had vanished, idiocy and the torpor of despondency were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... suppleness, and joyous flight, lie nerveless and flaccid at his feet; to be able to call the thicket-like antlers of the splendid animal his own, was for the time the one ambition of Hilary Sercombe; for he was of the brood of Mephistopheles, the child of darkness, whose delight lies in undoing what God has done—the nearest that any evil power can ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... reversing the positions of his head and feet, that is to say, by accepting the direct opposite of the Catholic dogma: and then he reascends to the light, by using the Devil himself as a monstrous ladder. Faust ascends to Heaven, by stepping on the head of the vanquished Mephistopheles. Hell is impassable for those only who know not how to turn back from it. We free ourselves from its ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... fixed form, Bildung or form change. He saw that Gestalt was but a momentary phase of Bildung, and could be considered apart and in itself only by an abstraction fatal to all understanding of the living thing. Mephistopheles scoffs at the scholars who would explain a living ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... 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, Pluto, and ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... Christians among us would wish. In one very popular novel the victim spends his wife's fortune at the gaming-table, leaves her to starve, lives with another woman, and, having committed forgery, plots with the Mephistopheles of the story to buy his own safety at the price of his wife's honour. This might seem bad enough, but worse remains. It is told in a smothered whisper, by the faithful domestic, to the horrified family, that he has reason to suspect his master of having indulged, once at ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... knowledge and the resulting power for twenty-four years, he sells his soul to Mephistopheles. Faustus then proceeds to enjoy all that the new order of things promised. He commands Homer to come from the realm of shades to sing his entrancing songs. He summons Helen to appear before him in the morning of her beauty. The apostrophe ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... let out 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
... noisy, lively, mischievous urchen in 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. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... 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 ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... him 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 I could see that the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... clearly traced in the two next conceptions: Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephistopheles. They differ as strongly as the periods and the poems in which they appear. Milton's Satan loses the vulgar flesh and bone, horn and hoof nature—he is an epic character; whilst Goethe's Devil is an active dramatic entity of modern times. Milton's representative ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of man and devil! What Mephistopheles is in me I feel far the first time in this hour, and I feel it, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 of youth and freshness. Faust agrees, and Mephisto endows him with youth and beauty. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... a very 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
... first word; and of these latter is Frank Swinnerton. But Frank Swinnerton can be more cruel than Irvin Cobb. Indeed, sometimes when he is telling a story, his face becomes exactly like the face of Mephistopheles in excellent humour with the world's ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... forth; Montrose had triumphed already. And Labarriere as Mephistopheles sprang up ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... "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 ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... are so 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 ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... that night. 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
... war-worn nose, and decided that its owner need fight no more. But he was not only brave; he possessed the invention of Prometheus, combined with the diabolical sense of humour which so much distinguished the late Mephistopheles. He offered to go on fighting if he might be allowed an iron nose. Goetz of Berliehingen, he said, had won battles with an iron hand, and the case was analogous. The proposition was put to the vote and carried unanimously amidst thunders of applause. The iron nose was made and fitted ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... would be a success; but really the dresses are wonderful. Then the mystery is so delightful. I can't recognise any one now under the masks. Look, who is that?" She glanced towards a lady dressed as Undine, who seemed to float by them, so light were her movements, on the arm of a Mephistopheles. ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... ear, seemed to issue from them simultaneously—a thick vapour filled the room, which gradually cleared off, and left no traces of Hans' visitors but three small sticks of stone brimstone. The truth flashed upon the barber—his visitor was the far-famed Mephistopheles. Hans packed up his remaining wardrobe, razor, strop, soap-dish, scissors and combs, and turned his back upon Stocksbawler forever. Four years passed away, and Hans was again a thriving man, and Agnes Flirtitz the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to get a reply by return mail, unless Mephistopheles interferes, which is not unlikely, since Mephistopheles is said to have been much pleased with the manner in which the eminent tragedian has put him before the British ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 think. "Look ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... passage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd 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"—"Mistoene 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... relieved, for the voice was that of his revered chief, Mr. Broby, who, he now recollected, was to figure at the masquerade as Mephistopheles. Behind him peeped forth the faces of his two daughters, one as Morning ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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
... scene in a clergyman's house. Every luxury to be purchased by wealth was described as being there: all the appearances of household indulgence generally found amongst the most self-indulgent of the rich were crowded into this abode. Here the reader was introduced to the demon of the book, the Mephistopheles of the drama. What story was ever written without a demon? What novel, what history, what work of any sort, what world, would be perfect without existing principles both of good and evil? The demon of "The Almshouse" was the clerical owner of this comfortable abode. He was ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... whole frame enlarged." It is creation, it is representing beings and things different from our nature, but true to their own. In this self-consistency is the only nature requisite in works purely imaginative. Lear is true to his nature, and so are Mephistopheles, and Prometheus, and Achilles; but they are not true to human nature; they are beings created by the poets' minds, and true to their laws of being. There is no commoner blunder in men, who are themselves mere ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... poets are endowed with the power of creating beings who seem to act and speak with perfect independence, so that the poet is nothing more than the relator of what takes place. When Goethe had conceived Faust and Margarete, Mephistopheles and Wagner, they moved and had their being without any exercise of his will. But in the peculiar power which Petronius exercises, in its application to every scene, to every individual character, in everything, noble ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... can't say what you think, if it is true, as an illustrious author says it is, that a man must think his words before he speaks his thoughts," cried a young man, standing near, who played the part of Mephistopheles in the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... to know that you stole two necklaces in the keeping of Mrs. Fairfax, on the night I met you first, and placed them on the neck of some bold young woman in the house next door, where, as you may remember, I saw you dressed as Mephistopheles. You——" ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... characters are scanned. That mood is for the most part ironical. There is 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Therein is to be 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 kind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... as Faust sold his to Mephistopheles. Your Lieutenant became your master; you found it convenient to believe his version of every thing, and to justify him in every thing, and you ended in making all his devilments your own, and adopting the whole infernal spawn ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... "the 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
... the suggestiveness of look and motion, were suited to a language which was nearer to the instincts of his own nature than word of mouth. All men did not trust Pierre, but all women did; with those he had a touch of Machiavelli, with these he had no sign of Mephistopheles, and few were the occasions in his life when he showed outward tenderness to either: which was equally effective. He had learnt, or knew by instinct, that exclusiveness as to men and indifference as to women are the greatest influences on both. As he stood there, slowly interpreting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... whole business of 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... upstanding lace collar, and absurd little puffed sleeves. The Englishman was a Puritan, his daughter a Quakeress, Mr. Johnson a Huguenot Lover, Miss Emmeline a Colonial Lady, Doctor Geddes a bearded and belted Boyar, and The Author a painfully realistic Mephistopheles, his eyebrows corked upward and his mustache waxed into points. Mr. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... years people have been complaining a little of the necessity of getting something new each year. Mrs. Bates, for example, has exhausted the possibilities of her husband's summer bath robe. It served excellently at first as a Roman toga, and the next year it did well enough for Mephistopheles. By cutting away the parts ravaged by moths it passed as a pirate, but she despairs of any further alteration. Then, too, it would always be remembered that a stranger at the last Vernal had in all seriousness reproved old Professor Narbo, the Chemist, for not ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... Browning's; for we think the best chapters in it are those which bring us into contact with Cartwright and other Methodist ministers, the frontiersmen and bushfighters of the Church, who do not bandy subtilties with Mephistopheles, nor consider that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman, but go in for a rough-and-tumble fight with Satan and his imps, as with so many red Injuns undeserving of the rights and incapable of the amenities of civilized ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "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 ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... a very easy way to convince yourself, my dear Von Hamner," replied Hendry, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose you go and interview this modern Mephistopheles yourself?" ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... order. He sees the night, but he also sees the day succeed it. Man falls into sin, but he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his nature, he cannot content himself with it, and he is driven through it. Mephistopheles promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to make Faust declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of evil what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness, whose nature, however obscured, is God's ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... o'clock. Eleven was daintily striking now. Its diminutive sonority might have belonged to some church-bell far distant across the Cambridge silence; but it was on a shelf in the room,—a timepiece of Gallic design, representing Mephistopheles, who caressed the world in his lap. And as the little strokes boomed, eight—nine—ten—eleven, the voice of the ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... I will launch them against a common enemy, an enemy we have hood-winked and waylaid, and whom we shall try to catch unarmed. Then when the hour of triumph shall sound, I will rise up; from Germany, in her intoxication, I will snatch a covenant, which, like that of Faust with Mephistopheles, she has signed with her blood, and by which she also, like Faust, has traded her soul away for the good ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... peace. This was done, and though Labouchere, Louis's agent, had so little to offer that his propositions were farcical, yet there was at least the show of a diplomatic negotiation. At this juncture the superserviceable Mephistopheles of the Empire, Fouche, intervened. By an agent of his own he approached the cabinet of St. James with an offer of peace on the basis of restoring the Spanish Bourbons and compensating Louis XVIII by a kingdom to be carved from the territories of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... MEPHISTOPHELES: As thou, O Lord, once more art kind enough To interest Thyself in our affairs, 30 And ask, 'How goes it with you there below?' And as indulgently at other times Thou tookest not my visits in ill part, Thou seest me here once ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Herald once called him Mephistopheles. He is not Mephistopheles, however, but the same thing, which is ULLMANN. He is a spirit ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be? And Coombes was such a harmless little man, too, nourished mentally on Self-Help, and with a meagre ambition of self-denial and competition, that was to end in a "sufficiency." Then Jennie came in as a female Mephistopheles, a gabbling chronicle of "fellers," and was always wanting his wife to go to theatres, and "all that." And in addition were aunts of his wife, and cousins (male and female) to eat up capital, insult him personally, upset business arrangements, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... at you! Do you know, you're getting a regular Mephistopheles, Spike? Suppose I hadn't an iron will, what would happen? You really must select your subjects of conversation more carefully. You're bad company for the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... like them in any other North American Indian records. They are, especially those which are from the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot, inspired with a genial cosmopolite humor. While Glooskap is always a gentleman, Lox ranges from Punch to Satan; passing through the stages of an Indian Mephistopheles and the Norse Loki, who appears to have been his true progenitor. But neither is quite like anything to be found among really savage races. When it is borne in mind that the most ancient and mythic of these legends have been taken down from the trembling memories of ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Professor. "The Present is an age of doubt and disbelief, and darkness; out of which shall arise a clear and bright Hereafter. In the second part of Goethe's Faust, there is a grand and striking scene, where in the classical Walpurgis Night, on the Pharsalian Plains, the mocking Mephistopheles sits down between the solemn antique Sphinxes, and boldly questions them, and reads their riddles. The red light of innumerable watch-fires glares all round about, and shines upon the terrible face of the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been brought into a condition of something very like {184} bankruptcy by the long and wasting war; and a projector was found who promised to supply the deficiency as boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in the second part of "Faust." John Law, a Scotchman, and unquestionably a man of great ability and financial skill, had settled in France in consequence of having fought a duel and killed his man in his own country. [Sidenote: 1710-1720—The South Sea Company] Law set up a company ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... 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 ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... white lace 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 herself and those of her neighbours who ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... in the Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very beginning; the incredulus odi is felt from the first line. The sensuality and the thirst after knowledge are unconnected with each other. Mephistopheles and Margaret are excellent; but Faust himself is dull and meaningless. The scene in Auerbach's cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best; that on the Brocken is also fine; and all the songs are ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... steals over him, numbing his senses—paralysing his brain. This man seems their evil genius, the red firelight playing on his tall slim figure, transforms him in Philip's eyes to a crimson Mephistopheles. Eleanor pours out a fresh cup of tea, and hands it to Mr. Quinton smilingly, as she did a moment ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Part II, 5. Mephistopheles' words, when he hands over to Faust the proceeds of a voyage. [War, trade, and piracy ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... upon one the more one thinks of it. Why did it never occur to them? There would have been a bit of a bother with the Old Man. I can imagine Mephistopheles being upset about it, thinking himself swindled. Of course, if that was the reason—if ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 that there is some question of making use of in the streets ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... 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
... Mephistopheles, it need hardly be added, was on this occasion true to his reputation for punctuality. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is remarked for being one of the last dramatic pieces in which the devil appears on the stage in his proper person—1591. It is also ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... myself! By Jove! it is more of a pleasure than at my years I had a right to expect! To think of an old sinner like me being blessed with such a victory over his worst enemy! It is more than I could deserve if I lived to the age of Mephistopheles! I shouldn't like to live so long—there's so little worth remembering! I wish forgetting things wiped them out! There are things I hardly know whether I did or only wanted to do!—Damn it, it may be ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... it, Helena! She 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 ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... which she coyly drew back, and uttering things sweeter and more polished than she had ever listened to before. At this moment Welford softly entered; he was unnoticed by either; and he stood at the door contemplating them with a smile of calm and self-hugging derision. The face of Mephistopheles regarding Margaret and Faust might suggest some idea of the picture we design to paint; but the countenance of Welford was more lofty, as well as comelier, in character, though not less malignant in expression, than that which the incomparable Retsch has given to the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for my accompaniments were usually rather indefinite quantities, subject to the mood of the moment. "Moscheles or Mephistopheles, which?" he asks, as he depicts me at the piano, perhaps evolving some such accompaniment from the depths of "untrained inner consciousness." "Eureka" he might have put under that other sketch, where his own hands have at last found some long-sought harmony or ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... Benedict Arnold of more recent times, men of intelligence? Were not the parties to the recent tragedy, two of whom Mr. Beecher united in unholy wedlock, passable enough in point of merely intellectual cultivation? Mephistopheles was a person of surprising accomplishments, and the ablest debates in literature are those which Milton puts in the mouths of the grand synod of devils in Pandemonium. Byron was a prodigy of intelligence; but, whether Mrs. ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... 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, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... attending that fancy-dress ball, mark you—not, like every other well-bred Englishman, as a Pierrot, but as Mephistopheles—this involving, as I need scarcely stress, not only scarlet tights but a pretty ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... "No Name Series," Miss Alcott wrote "A Modern Mephistopheles," her least agreeable book, but original, imaginative, and powerful. The moral of the story is that, in our modern life, the devil does not appear with a cloven foot, but as a cultivated man of the world. Miss Alcott's Mephistopheles ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... bargain. Sir RONALD ROSS, however, to judge from the rather confused mediaeval happenings in the Alps which are faithfully described in The Revels of Orsera (MURRAY), has rather a low opinion of the intelligence of Mephistopheles. Anyhow, a certain Zozimo, deformed in body but of great romantic sensibility, appears to have exchanged his outward presence for that of a rich and handsome young Count, and in this guise wooed the Lady Lelita, for whose sake her father had devised a magnificent contest of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... approved of the decision, and Jack left the service. At his request, his devoted admirer Mesty—an abbreviation of Mephistopheles—an African, once a prince in Ashantee and now the cook of the midshipmen's mess, was allowed to leave the service and accompany our hero to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... his arms about and stamp on the ground, as if unable to behold any one. I once heard a young lady in New York profess unbounded admiration for him, because "he looked so charmingly like the devil." For many years the New York Herald always described him as the Reverend Mephistopheles Hurlbut. There was another very beautiful lady who afterwards died a strange and violent death, as also a friend of mine, an editor in New York, both of whom narrated to me at very great length "a grotesque Iliad of the wild career" of this ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... who formulated his hypo-chondriacal nightmares, and called the result a philosophy, he might 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, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... to waistcoat, and compressive waist to coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his feminine boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and white as to his linen: dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed - got up, one thinks, like Lucifer or Mephistopheles, or Zamiel, transformed into a highly genteel Parisian - has the green end of a pine-apple sticking ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... part (Mephistopheles and final chorus) of the "Faust" Symphony in score—and the complete arrangement of this same ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... the state of society when writs were issued for a new election. Encouraged by it, John Wilkes once more stepped upon the stage, and offered himself as a candidate for the suffrages of the people. And, as it has been well said, Mephistopheles himself could not have chosen a better time for mischief. For, at this time, the populace had no idol in whom they could place their confidence, and they hailed his reappearance with delight. By their aid, indeed, he soon became enabled to insult his sovereign, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in Marguerite's prison, Mephistopheles sang, and the orchestra imitated the gallop of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... treated as a sort of extended jest-book, where the poet pointed out the bon-mots [Footnote: French; pronounced bong-mos.] and acted in some degree as corrector of the Press. If he discharged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit of a Mephistopheles, this, too, was considered as part of his functions. He was the Ter'roe Fil'ius [Footnote: Terroe Filius, son of the earth; that is, a human being.] of the day; and lenity would have been considered, not as an act of discretion, but as a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... would have found it difficult to realize that only thirty-four years had plowed those deep, rugged lines in his swarthy and colorless but still handsome face; where midnight orgies and habitual excesses had left their unmistakable plague-spot, and Mephistopheles had stamped his signet. Blase, cynical, scoffing, and hopeless, he had stranded his life, and was recklessly striding to his grave, trampling upon the feelings of all with whom he associated, and at war with a world, in which his lordly brilliant intellect would have lifted him ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... most charming 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
... 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, above the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... as a discovery made by Mephistopheles in Thessaly, in the classical Walpurgisnacht, that the company there was very much like his old acquaintances on the Brocken. A similar discovery, in regard to more honourable personages and other scenes, may be made by other Gothic travellers in a "south-eastward" journey to ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... or of the spectroscope. His mind expands and his ideals rise. It is a little incongruous to suppose that some infinitely wiser and affectionate parent was looking on all the time and giving no assistance. In the dialogue between Mephistopheles and God which Goethe prefixes to his Faust, the devil obviously scores. In the sight of such an intelligence man must have made a pretty fool of himself during the last 1500 years. We human beings are more charitable. Take the ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... an acute judge of men. He read their motives, their bad ones especially, with the accuracy of a Mephistopheles, and with the same cold contempt for every trace ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... bower of fashion. Styles, which I had thought were new in Paris, were familiarly worn in Perry by the mill hands. White kid gloves were en regle. The play was "Faust." All allusions to the triumph of religion over the devil; all insinuations on the part of Mephistopheles in regard to the enviable escape of Martha's husband and of husbands in general, from prating women in general; all invocations of virtue and moral triumph, were greeted with bursts of applause. Between the acts there was music, and the ushers ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... was the editor himself—not merely his photograph: a little man, clad in evening dress, very neat and dapper. He had a black beard, trimmed to a point, and also a sarcastic smile, and he impressed Thyrsis as a drawing-room edition of Mephistopheles. He lounged at ease in a big chair, not troubling to talk; save that every now and then he would punctuate the discussion with some droll reflection that stuck in one's mind ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... creations. Amid all the distractions of the world and of life, the author always heard a voice ringing in his ears and mockingly revealing the secrets of things at the very moment he was watching a woman as she danced, smiled, or talked. Just as Mephistopheles pointed out to Faust in that terrific assemblage at the Brocken, faces full of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... it of your own accord, without asking me, you will see how you get through. Faust is so strange an individual that only a few persons can sympathise with his inner condition. Then the character of Mephistopheles is also very difficult, because of his irony, and also because he is the living result of an extensive acquaintance with the world. But you will see ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... around, Mephistopheles-like, gloating on the sinister changes that he would soon occasion. He was to succeed even better ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... tell me about security!" Colonel Zareff barked. "You should have seen the lengths our staff went to. I remember, once, on Mephistopheles ..." ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the Mephistopheles of the office, debauching his editor's guileless mind with all the wily ways of the old journalistic hand; he was of real use in protecting Raphael against the thousand and one pitfalls that make the editorial chair as perilous to the occupant ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... beautiful in nature may be keen, but it will continually vanish before humour or mere fun; while having no deep root in life or interests in common with the settled Anglo-Saxon citizen, he cannot fail to appear at times to the latter as a near relation to Mephistopheles. But his "mockery" is as accidental and naif as that of Jewish Young Germany is keen and deliberate; and the former differs from the latter as the drollery of Abraham a Santa Clara differs from the brilliant ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... 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
... 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
... impulse 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; ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... for several Italian papers, and about the same time wrote several poems of more than ordinary merit. Both in literature and music his taste was diversified; and he combined the two talents in a remarkable degree in his opera of "Mephistopheles," the only work by which he is known to the musical world at large. He studied Goethe profoundly; and the notes which he has appended to the score show a most intimate knowledge of the Faust legend. His ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... Bernard Shaw Fills me with mingled Mirth and Awe. Mixture of Mephistopheles, Don Quixote, and Diogenes, The Devil's wit, the Don's Romance Joined to the Cynic's arrogance. Framed on Pythagorean plan, A Vegetable Souperman. Here you may see him crown with bay The Greatest Playwright of his day;[1] Observe the ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford |
