"Mephistophelian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delighted. It appeared to him a Mephistophelian ingenuity. He thought how clever women were, on their own ground, and what an advantage they had in their immense lack ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... have been paralysed with fear by one shot coming out of a Boer farm, and thereby demoralised and incapacitated from taking command of a handful of men; that, instead of blowing his brains out, he should have imposed his Mephistophelian compact upon the unhappy Somers and carried off the knavish business successfully—I could not believe it. On the other hand, there was the British private. I have known him all my life, God bless him! Thank God, it is my privilege to know ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... probably useless to argue with any such. It might, indeed, be urged in all seriousness that the Peacockian attitude is not in the least identical with the Mephistophelian; that it is based simply on the very sober and arguable ground that human nature is always very much the same, liable to the same delusions and the same weaknesses; and that the oldest things are likely to be best, not for any intrinsic or mystical virtue of antiquity, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... well: twelve years of the other's friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a peculiar desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. 'That ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward |
