Stephen Crane: Man

“I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.”

Stephen Crane book The Black Riders and Other Lines

Source: The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895), XXIV
Context: I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never—""You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

“A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."”

Stephen Crane

A Man Said to the Universe, No. 20
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
Source: War Is Kind and Other Poems

Sense , Universe

“Think as I think," said a man, "or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad." And after I thought of it, I said, "I will, then, be a toad.”

Stephen Crane

Thinking

“Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.”

Stephen Crane

Source: Complete Poems of Stephen Crane

Fate , Sea

“A MAN FEARED

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.”

Stephen Crane

Fear

“The man had arrived at that stage of drunkenness where affection is felt for the universe.”

Stephen Crane book Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Source: Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

Universe

“When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself." A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. VI
The Open Boat (1894)

Love , Hate , Feeling , Star

“It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. III
The Open Boat (1894)

Life , Men , Lying , Water

“He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.”

Stephen Crane book The Red Badge of Courage

Source: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Ch. 24

Death

“The word is clear only to the kind who on peak or plain, from dark northern ice-fields to the hot wet jungles, through all wine and want, through lies and unfamiliar truth, dark or light, are governed by the unknown gods, and though each man knows the law, no man may give tongue to it.”

Stephen Crane

"The Clan of No Name" (1899); published in the anthology Wounds in the Rain (1900)

God , Truth , Law , Light

“I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never—""You lie," he cried,
And ran on.”

Stephen Crane book The Black Riders and Other Lines

Source: The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895), XXIV

Lie