Stephen Crane Quotes & Sayings

If a man loves a woman better than the whole universe, how much does he love the whole universe? — Stephen Crane

If I should cast off this tattered coat, And go free into the mighty sky; If I should find nothing there But a vast blue, Echoless, ignorant
What then? — Stephen Crane

She thinks my name is Freddie, you know, but of course it ain't. I
always tell these people some name like that, because if they got onto
your right name they might use it sometime. Understand? — Stephen Crane

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to
even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. — Stephen Crane

I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
and carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, "Comrade! Brother! — Stephen Crane

It was wrong to do this," said the angel.
"You should live like a flower,
Holding malice like a puppy,
Waging war like a lambkin."
"Not so," quoth the man
Who had no fear of spirits;
"It is only wrong for angels
Who can live like the flowers,
Holding malice like the puppies,
Waging war like the lambkins. — Stephen Crane

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. — Stephen Crane

Nothing is so much to be regretted as the universe. — Stephen Crane

Half of tradition is a lie. — Stephen Crane

The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One — Stephen Crane

The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency. Strings of expletives he swung lashlike over the backs of his men, and it was evident that his previous efforts had in nowise impaired his resources. — Stephen Crane

But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision. — Stephen Crane

Unwind my riddle.Cruel as hawks the hours fly;Wounded men seldom come home to die;The hard waves see an arm flung high;Scorn hits strong because of a lie;Yet there exists a mystic tie.Unwind my riddle. — Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon — Stephen Crane

All men are. I declare, I think you to be the most incomprehensible creatures. — Stephen Crane

The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. — Stephen Crane

Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. — Stephen Crane

Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him. It was a creation of beauty and invulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to it he endowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind. — Stephen Crane

Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. — Stephen Crane

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dinghy one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience, which is never at sea in a dinghy. — Stephen Crane

When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters. — Stephen Crane

He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks - an existence of soft and eternal peace. — Stephen Crane

Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery. — Stephen Crane

His feet where retarded. — Stephen Crane

These stupid peasants, who, throughout the world, hold potentates on their thrones, make statesmen illustrious, provide generals with lasting victories, all with ignorance, indifference, or half-witted hatred, moving the world with the strength of their arms, and getting their heads knocked together in the name of God, the king, or the stock exchange-immortal, dreaming, hopeless asses, who surrender their reason to the care of a shining puppet, and persuade some toy to carry their lives in his purse. — Stephen Crane

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."
She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. She made it with infinite care, and hung it to the slightly careening mantel over the stove in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear.
Afterwards the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins. — Stephen Crane

She performed nearly all the house-work in exchange for the privilege of existence. Every — Stephen Crane

None of them knew the color of the sky. — Stephen Crane

That is the most odiously aristocratic belief, — Stephen Crane

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it. Well men shy from his new and terrible majesty. It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence - the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing; and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little. His comrades look at him with large eyes thoughtfully. Moreover, they fear vaguely that the weight of a finger upon him might send him headlong, precipitate the tragedy, hurl him at once into the dim, gray unknown.
("An Episode Of War") — Stephen Crane

Tradition, thou art for suckling children, Thou art the enlivening milk for babes, But no meat for men is in thee. — Stephen Crane

This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual
nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life and have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems absurdly clear to him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands that if he were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and be better and brighter during an introduction, or at a tea. — Stephen Crane

He was submitting, submitting because of his fathers, bending his mind in a most perfect slavery to this conflagration. — Stephen Crane

I like the people. But, considered generally, they are a collection of ingenious blockheads. — Stephen Crane

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood. He conceived Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy. — Stephen Crane

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

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 red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer. — Stephen Crane

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,Raged at his breast, gulped and died,Do not weep.War is kind. — Stephen Crane

If I am going to be drowned - if I am going to be drowned - if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? — Stephen Crane

There was a man with tongue of wood who essayed to sing,
and in truth it was lamentable;
but there was one who heard the clip-clapper of this tongue of wood,
and knew what the man wished to sing,
and with that the singer was content. — Stephen Crane

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it
It was clay.
Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold. — Stephen Crane

The wind had a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder than the end. — Stephen Crane

Two or three angels Came near to the earth. They saw a fat church. Little black streams of people Came and went in continually. And the angels were puzzled To know why the people went thus, And why they stayed so long within. — Stephen Crane

A mysterious fraternity born out of smoke and danger of death. — Stephen Crane

Mother, whose heart hung humble as a button the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind. — Stephen Crane

A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the first man to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer. — Stephen Crane

He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part - a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country - was in a crisis. He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire. For some moments he could not flee no more than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand. — Stephen Crane

You get so frightfully hungry as soon as you learn that there are no more meals coming. — Stephen Crane

The voice of God whispers in the heart
So softly
That the soul pauses,
Making no noise,
And strives for these melodies,
Distant, sighing, like faintest breath,
And all the being is still to hear. — Stephen Crane

This poor gambler isn't even a noun. He is kind of an adverb. — Stephen Crane

Truth ... Is a breath, a wind, A shadow, a phantom; Long have I pursued it, But never have I touched The hem of its garment. — Stephen Crane

When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me. — Stephen Crane

They were going to look at war, the red
animal
war, the blood-swollen god. — Stephen Crane

If there is a witness to my little life,To my tiny throes and struggles,He sees a fool;And it is not fine for gods to menace fools. — Stephen Crane

At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage. — Stephen Crane

There is nothing-
No life,
No joy,
No pain-
There is nothing save opinion,
And opinion be damned. — Stephen Crane

It perhaps might be said
if any one dared
that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another. — Stephen Crane

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. — Stephen Crane

He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined them. Also, — Stephen Crane

If You Ain't Afraid, Go Do It Then — Stephen Crane

It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment. — Stephen Crane

Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night. — Stephen Crane

We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest peeling, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smitten, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb. The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One was a coxcomb not to die in it. — Stephen Crane

Once upon a time there was a beautiful Indian maiden, of course. — Stephen Crane

It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible. — Stephen Crane

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

The man had arrived at that stage of drunkenness where affection is felt for the universe. — Stephen Crane

And, furthermore, how could they kill him who was the chosen of gods and doomed to greatness? — Stephen Crane

And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends. — Stephen Crane

IV
Yes, I have a thousand tongues,
And nine and nighty-nine lie.
Though I strive to use the one,
It will make no melody at my will,
But is dead in my mouth. — Stephen Crane

But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and saved his
respectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to
know that there was a soul before him that needed saving? — Stephen Crane

Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature. — Stephen Crane

He had been a mere man railing at a condition, but now he was out of it and could see that it had been very proper and just. It had been necessary for him to swallow swords that he might have a better throat for grapes. — Stephen Crane

Doubtless there are other roads. — Stephen Crane

As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. — Stephen Crane

The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen. Some arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred. It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the field. This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said "mule drivers," and later "mud diggers," for in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly. And it was his idea, vaguely formulated, that his corpse would be for those eyes a great and salt reproach. — Stephen Crane

I cannot help vanishing and disappearing and dissolving. It is my foremost trait. — Stephen Crane

It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws. — Stephen Crane

Every sin is the result of collaboration. — Stephen Crane

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

He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. — Stephen Crane

It is perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life and have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance. — Stephen Crane

There were many who went in huddled procession,
They knew not wither,
But, at any rate, success or calamity
Would attend all in equality.
There was one who sought a new road,
He went into direful thickets,
And ultimately he died thus, alone;
But they said he had courage. — Stephen Crane

He occasionally tried to fathom a comrade with seductive sentences. He looked about to find men in the proper mood. All attempts failed to bring forth any statement which looked in any way like a confession to those doubts which he privately acknowledged in himself. He was afraid to make an open declaration of his concern, because he dreaded to place some unscrupulous confidant upon the high plane of the unconfessed from which elevation he could be derided. — Stephen Crane

Such an assemblage of the spraddle-legged men of the middle class, whose hands were bent and shoulders stooped from delving and constructing, had never appeared to an Asbury Park summer crowd, and the latter was vaguely amused. — Stephen Crane

They would jeer him, and, if practicable, pelt him with missiles. — Stephen Crane

LXV [Once, I knew a fine song]
Once, I knew a fine song,
- It is true, believe me,
It was all of birds,
And I held them in a basket;
When I opened the wicket,
Heavens! They all flew away.
I cried, "Come back, little thoughts!"
But they only laughed.
They flew on
Until they were as sand
Thrown between me and the sky. — Stephen Crane

XXIV
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

The moon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop. — Stephen Crane

XXVI
There was set before me a mighty hill,
And long days I climbed
Through regions of snow.
When I had before me the summit-view,
It seemed my labor
Had been to see gardens
Lying at impossible distances. — Stephen Crane

Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be nothing but rest, and he was filled with a momentary astonishment that he should have made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter of getting killed. — Stephen Crane

What a woman says doesn't amount to shucks. It's the way she says it - that's what counts. — Stephen Crane

The slaves toiling in the temple of this god began to feel rebellion at his harsh tasks. — Stephen Crane

Through his suffering, he peers into the core of things and sees that the judgment of man is thistle-down in the wind. — Stephen Crane

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

The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads. — Stephen Crane

Everything is bicycle. — Stephen Crane

A learned man came to me once. He said, "I know the way,
come." And I was overjoyed at this. Together we hastened. Soon, too soon, were we Where my eyes were useless, And I knew not the ways of my feet. I clung to the hand of my friend; But at last he cried, "I am lost. — Stephen Crane

He did not consider public opinion to be accurate at long range. — Stephen Crane