“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They we…" by Stephen Vincent Benét?
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Stephen Vincent Benét102
poet, short story writer, novelist 1898–1943

Related quotes

Robert Olmstead photo

“Though he had never smelled the death of men before, he knew the smell as if it were a knowledge born into him.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Coal Black Horse (2007)

Robert Olmstead photo

“Of the men and women, the women were always the hardest of the band. They knew what the men knew but they also knew what the men would never know. They knew hard work and hunger, but they also knew childbirth and they knew the death of those children. They knew rape and the death of their men. They knew hatred and no one returns hate like a woman.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Far Bright Star (2009)

“I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“Pascal scornfully said that simple workmen had been able to convince of error those great men that are called 'philosophers'. It was, then, these unlearned men… who were most ready to believe 'what they saw with their eyes and touched with their hands'.”

Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994) Dutch historian

Religion and the rise of modern science, 1972

Margaret Cho photo

“Thank God for gay men. Thank God for gay men, because if it were not for gay men, I would not talk to men at all.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, I'm The One That I Want Tour

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Michael Connelly photo

“There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men.”

Michael Connelly The Scarecrow

Source: The Scarecrow

Xenophanes photo

“There is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor in thought.”

Xenophanes (-570–-475 BC) Presocratic philosopher

Fragment 23, as quoted in Notes on Greek Philosophy by Anthony Preus (Global Academic Publishing, 1996), p. 10

T.S. Eliot photo

“And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.

Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.
Nevertheless, we make a beginning. it is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now — there are the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken — but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods — the place newyork — not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others — the gods Lincoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man's face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

Related topics