Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
War
Fats
Bonnets
Lost
Titles
Mule
Never
Fallen
Mules
Love
Medicine
Mining
Claims
Flat
Plumed
Losing
Flats
Tucson
Names
Sharp
Deadwood
American
Hats
Bonnet

More quotes by Stephen Vincent Benet

Image
When my own writing needs a perk, I open Zukofsky and read from A - particularly sections 22 and 23. It can be opaque, but I love the intensity.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
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
Image
Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make. A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound, But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
The art finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth. Our children know and suffer the armed men.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
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
Image
Books are not men and yet they are alive.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
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
Image
One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls, Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars - They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble, Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy, That something new is coming to the world, The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming, And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact. If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
When I was in graduate school, my thesis included both poetry and essays. Influenced by the personal essays of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer, I loved the form, but pretty much stopped.
Stephen Vincent Benet
Image
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