23 quotes
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.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
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.
The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)
They were going to look at war, the red animal — war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed in this march.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.
The Open Boat (1894)
He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
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.
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.
The Clan of No Name (1899)
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.
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
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.
The Open Boat (1894)
Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awe-struck ways...It was revealed to him that he had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion.
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
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."
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom —
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)
Should the wide world roll away
Leaving black terror
Limitless night,
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.
The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)