Quotes from Stella Benson

Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten.

The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead.

The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it.

Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten.

Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed -- or cursed -- with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple.

People who were not American seemed deliberately to avoid efficiency or comfort.

The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them.

There were so few clouds in the sky that when the sun went down it found no canvas on which to paint its picture.

A committee, of course, exists for the purpose of damping enthusiasms.

High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes; All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me; Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?

He was always willing to be the text of his own oratory.

Prayer is the weary soul of Herod's dancer, Dancing before blind kings without applause.

Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!

It is so easy to be wild and let love rip; poets get such easy kudos.

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.

We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back.

You can't discover one foot of clay on an idol without suspecting the other.

There was a magic in the words. I suppose their power lay in their utter futility.

There are some people who can never see a little cloud of fantasy float across the horizon of their dreams without building a heavy castle in the air upon it, and bringing it to earth.

The moment of cocoa-drinking was always the moment of confidences.

Now there is hardly anything but magic abroad before seven o'clock in the morning. Only the disciples of magic like getting their feet wet, and being furiously happy on an empty stomach.

I want to go out into the country, I want to thread the pale Spring air, and hear the lambs cry. I want to brush my face against the grass, and wade in a wave of bluebells.

And you shall find upon the beach The traces of my dancing

That sea - that mother of a million summers, Who bore, with melody, a million springs, Shall sing for my enchantment...