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American Muse, whose strong and diverse heart So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller with their art, Because you are as various as your land.

Stephen Vincent Benet

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Stephen Vincent Benet
Age: 44 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 22
Died: 1943
Died: March 13
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
Stephen Vincent Benet
Men
Land
American
Understand
Muse
Strong
Smaller
Art
Diverse
Many
Various
Heart
Tried
Made
Whose

More quotes by Stephen Vincent Benet

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Remember that when you say I will have non of this exile and this stranger for his face is not like my face and his speech is strange, you have denied America with that word.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Our earth is but a small star in a great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexxed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color or theory.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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I have fallen in love with American names, The sharp names that never get fat, The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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I admire the attention other writers can give to the world we're walking in.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Money is sullen And wisdom is sly, But youth is the pollen That blows through the sky And does not ask why.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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When Daniel Boone goes by at night The phantom deer arise And all lost, wild America Is burning in their eyes.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Something begins, begins Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroad, In flesh and spirit and fire. Something is loosed to change the shaken world.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Grant us a common faith that we shall know bread and peace-that we shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do our best not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march toward the clean world our hands can make.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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The blog is also a way to continue to register what I see and hear in a day - no matter what the form. In fact, my blog is a complete mixture of forms.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Broad-streeted Richmond . . . The trees in the streets are old trees used to living with people, Family trees that remember your grandfather's name.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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If two New Hampshiremen aren't a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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I've been reading a lot lately about Indian captives. One woman who had been captured by the Indians and made a squaw was resentful when she was rescued because she'd found that there was a lot more work to do as the wife of a white man.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth. Our children know and suffer the armed men.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you might die of the truth.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Books are not men and yet they are alive.
Stephen Vincent Benet
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Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my bufdfalo have found me.
Stephen Vincent Benet