Quotes from Stephen Crane

But he instantly saw that it would be impossible for him to escape from the regiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition and law on four sides. He was in a moving box

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.

if a man loves a woman better than the whole universe, how much does he love the whole universe?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If You Ain't Afraid, Go Do It Then

Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections. The debates drained him of his fire.

The doctor was shaving this lawn as if it were a priest's chin. All

skirmishers who were running hither and thither

The shadows of the woods were formidable. He was certain that in this vista there lurked fierce-eyed hosts. The swift thought came to him that the generals did not know what they were about. It was all a trap. Suddenly those close forests would bristle with rifle barrels.

In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends.

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

He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for which they were fighting. It was a mysterious fraternity borne of the smoke and danger of death.

He had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man.

Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.

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

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

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.

nothing is so much to be regretted as the universe.

LVI A man feared that he might find an assassin; Another that he might find a victim. One was more wise than the other.

With the conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, non-assertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.