What art thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?

… the lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making.

Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbartThe human power is revealed by poetIl potere dell’umanità si rivela nel poeta

What shall a man gain if he has the whole world and lose his soul,” (Matt. 16: v. 26) – but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life...

What you inherit from your fathermust first be earned before it’s yours.

In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.

When he comes to the doorhe always looks mocking and half-way angry.You can see he has sympathy for nothing.It’s written on his foreheadthat he can love no one.

… Faustus … dared to confirm he had advanced beyond the level of a scarlet sinner — he was a conscious follower of the Prince of Darkness. The fact he could publicly project an Antichrist...

Being full of mischief, they love to listen;they gladly obey, for they like to betray you,pretending to be sent from Heaven,and lisping like angels, while they lie.

(Marlowe’s) Faustus stubbornly reverts to his atheistic beliefs and continues his elementary pagan re-education ~ the inferno to him is a ‘place’ invented by men.

Men grieve [Mephistopheles] so with the days of their lamenting, [he] even hate[s] to plague them with [his] torments.

Thus, Marlowe posed the silent question: could aspiring Icarus be happy with a toilsome life on land managing a plough with plodding oxen having once tasted the weightless bliss of flight?

Upon the publication of Goethe’s epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward...

Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good willmy soul do thy lord?Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom.Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus?Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.(It is a comfort to the wretched...

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike

I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat – O that there would come a famine...