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327 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1808
If ever I lie down in sloth and base inaction, / Then let that moment be my end! / If by your false cajolery / You lull me into self-sufficiency, / If any pleasure you can give / Deludes me, let me cease to live! / I offer you this wager!"From here the two take flight (literary) on a world-wind tour of debauchery and more debauchery. “Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man.”
"Do you know me now? Skinny, cadaverous bitch, / do you know your lord and master? Why don't I / Smash you to pieces, tell me why, / You and your ape-familiars? Must I teach / You some respect for my red doublet? What / Is this cock's feather, eh? My face / have I been hiding it? You learn your place, / Old hag! Am I to name myself or not?"Good, good stuff.
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:In Faust, the name of the game is passion. Passion for learning, passion for love, passion for life in all its forms and facets. The deprivation of passion by the slow grind of facts and figures and hypocrisy, the boons of inheritance providing shortcuts without granting the necessary experience of true effort, and excess. When the world is at one's feet, what is there left for passion to strive for?
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Ozymandias'
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
("Who ever strives with all his power,
We are allowed to save.")
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust