Skip to content

Stephen Vincent Benét Quotes

1898–1943 United States

Stephen Vincent Benét (22 July 1898 – 13 March 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer and novelist.

United States
Academics
Journalists
Novelists
Poets

Random Stephen Vincent Benét quote

54 quotes

We heard the shots in the night
But nobody knew next day what the trouble was
And a man must go to his work.

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!

Young Adventure (1918)

Now I tell what is very strong magic. I woke in the midst of the night.

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

God of the free, we pledge our hearts and lives today to the cause of all free mankind.
Grant us victory over the tyrants who would enslave all free men and nations.

Prayer (1942)

And yet I strove — and I was fire
And ice — and fire and ice were one
In one vast hunger of desire.

Young Adventure (1918)

I have been in the Place of the Gods and seen it! Now slay me, if it is the law — but still I know they were men.

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

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

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

For those who still said "Red Front" or "God save the Crown!"
And for those who were not courageous
But were beaten nevertheless.

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Eternally the choking steam goes up
From the black pools of seething oil...

Young Adventure (1918)

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

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)

She stood there, and at once I knew
The bitter thing that I must do.
There could be no surrender now;
Though Sleep and Death were whispering low.

Young Adventure (1918)

I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops.

A Child is Born (1942)

But not the first Illusion, the new earth,
The march upon the solitary fire,
The casting of the dice of death and birth
Against a giant, for a blind desire,
The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried,
The metal sleeping in the mountainside.

Western Star (1943)

They were men who were here before us. We must build again.

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse.
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea.
You may bury my body in Sussex grass,
You may bury my tongue at Champmédy.
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass.
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

American Names (1931)

When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city — poor gods, poor gods!

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

We had a rock to defend, and we defended it. And the name of that rock is Liberty, and in that name I speak.

Toward the Century of the Common Man (1942)

When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. Am I not in your books and stories and beliefs, from the first settlements on?

The Devil and Daniel Webster (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."

Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

For this world cannot endure, half slave and half free!
My name is FREEDOM and my command today is ... Unite!

Toward the Century of the Common Man (1942)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Stephen Vincent Benét (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.