Stephen Vincent Benét: Trending quotes

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Stephen Vincent Benét: 204 quotes2 likes

“The time is — time. The place is anywhere.
The voices speak to you across the air
To say that once again a child is born.
A child is born.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Narrator
A Child is Born (1942)

“We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

“Oh dear and laughing, lost to me,
Hidden in grey Eternity,
I shall attain, with burning feet,
To you and to the mercy-seat!
The ages crumble down like dust,
Dark roses, deviously thrust
And scattered in sweet wine — but I,
I shall lift up to you my cry,
And kiss your wet lips presently
Beneath the ever-living Tree.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

“If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

“He knew that once you bested anybody like Mr. Scratch in fair fight, his power on you was gone. And he could see that Mr. Scratch knew it too.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

“Icarus, Icarus, though the end is piteous,
Yet forever, yea, forever we shall see thee rising thus,
See the first supernal glory, not the ruin hideous.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Source: Young Adventure (1918), Winged Man

“I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They were men — they went a dark road, but they were men.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

“Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress.
"We are all good citizens here. We believe in the Perfect State."”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

“This in my heart I keep for goad!
Somewhere, in Heaven she walks that road.
Somewhere… in Heaven… she walks… that… road…”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

“For ever… well… it droops the mouth. Till I
Look up.
There's one blue patch no smoke dares touch.
Sky, clear, ineffable, alive with light,
Always the same…
Before, I never knew
Rest and green peace.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Lover in Hell

“Perhaps 'tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence … but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

Mr. Scratch
The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

“Eternally the choking steam goes up
From the black pools of seething oil…”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Lover in Hell

“How shall I tell what I saw? The towers are not all broken — here and there one still stands, like a great tree in a forest, and the birds nest high. But the towers themselves look blind, for the gods are gone. I saw a fishhawk, catching fish in the river. I saw a little dance of white butterflies over a great heap of broken stones and columns. I went there and looked about me — there was a carved stone with cut — letters, broken in half. I can read letters but I could not understand these. They said UBTREAS. There was also the shattered image of a man or a god. It had been made of white stone and he wore his hair tied back like a woman's. His name was ASHING, as I read on the cracked half of a stone. I thought it wise to pray to ASHING, though I do not know that god.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

“A soul. A soul is nothing. Can you see it, smell it, touch it? No.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

“For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time…”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

“He brings man's freedom in his hands,
Not as a coin that may be spent or lost
But as a living fire within the heart,
Never quite quenched — because he brings to all,
The thought, the wish, the dream of brotherhood,
Never and never to be wholly lost,
The water and the bread of the oppressed,
The stay and succor of the resolute,
The harness of the valiant and the brave,
The new word that has changed the shaken world.
And, though he die, his word shall grow like wheat
And every time a child is born,
In pain and love and freedom hardly won,
Born and gone forth to help and aid mankind,
There will be women with a right to say
"Gloria, gloria in excelsis deo!
A child is born!"”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

“We are the earth his word must sow like wheat
And, if it finds no earth, it cannot grow.
We are his earth, the mortal and the dying,
Led by no star — the sullen and the slut,
The thief, the selfish man, the barren woman,
Who have betrayed him once and will betray him,
Forget his words, be great a moment's space
Under the strokes of chance,
And then sink back into our small affairs.
And yet, unless we go, his message fails.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

“I see that I've said something you don't like,
Something uncouth and bold and terrifying,
And yet, I'll tell you this:
It won't be till each one of us is willing,
Not you, not me, but every one of us,
To hang upon a cross for every man
Who suffers, starves and dies,
Fight his sore battles as they were our own,
And help him from the darkness and the mire,
That there will be no crosses and no tyrants,
No Herods and no slaves.”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Dismas, the thief
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

“Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost
Minute by minute, day by dragging day,
In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways,
The smooth appeasing compromises of time,
Which are King Herod and King Herod's men,
Always and always. Life can be
Lost without vision but not lost by death,
Lost by not caring, willing, going on
Beyond the ragged edge of fortitude
To something more — something no man has ever seen.
You who love money, you who love yourself,
You who love bitterness, and I who loved
and lost and thought I could not love again,
And all the people of this little town,
Rise up! The loves we had were not enough.
Something is loosed to change the shaken world,
And with it we must change!”

Stephen Vincent Benét

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)