Stephen Crane Quotes

American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

Stephen Crane (1 November 1871 – 5 June 1900) was an American novelist, poet and journalist.

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Pen Names: Johnston Smith

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If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?

Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels.

He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined them. Also,

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.

That is the most odiously aristocratic belief,

Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea.

And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends.

It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.

A man said to the universe:
'Sir, I exist!'
'However,' replied the Universe,
'The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.

He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid.

The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.

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

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom — A field where a thousand corpses lie.

But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.

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