“I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.”
Work
Goethe’s masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, <b>Faust</b><i> </i>has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience, or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever. Here, in <b>Faust</b><i>, </i>Part I, the tremendous versatility of Goethe’s genius creates some of the most beautiful passages in literature. Here too we experience Goethe’s characteristic humor, the excitement and eroticism of the witches’ Walpurgis Night, and the moving emotion of Gretchen’s tragic fate.<br><br>This authoritative edition, which offers Peter Salm’s wonderfully readable translation as well as the original German on facing pages, brings us <b>Faust</b> in a vital, rhythmic American idiom that carefully preserves the grandeur, integrity, and poetic immediacy of Goethe’s words.
Quotes
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Canonical work source
“I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.”
“If the whole world I once could see On free soil stand, with the people free Then to the moment might I say, Linger awhile. . .so fair thou art.”
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
“Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirre...”
“من هرگز در حسرت بال پرندگان نخواهم بود. جذبه های جانم، از کتابی به کتاب دیگر و از صفحه ای به صفحه ی دیگر مرا به جاهای بسیار دورتر می برند.”
“You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,...”