English novelist (1892-1933)
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.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
There pass the trav'lling dreams, and these my soul adores.
STELLA BENSON
Twenty
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.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
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.
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
People who were not American seemed deliberately to avoid efficiency or comfort.
STELLA BENSON
Pipers and a Dancer
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?
STELLA BENSON
Twenty
There were so few clouds in the sky that when the sun went down it found no canvas on which to paint its picture.
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
Come home, come home, you million ghosts,
The honest years shall make amends,
The sun and moon shall be your hosts,
The everlasting hills your friends.
STELLA BENSON
Twenty
Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
STELLA BENSON
Pipers and a Dancer
The moment of cocoa-drinking was always the moment of confidences.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
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.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
Prayer is the weary soul of Herod's dancer,
Dancing before blind kings without applause.
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
A committee, of course, exists for the purpose of damping enthusiasms.
STELLA BENSON
Living Alone
He was always willing to be the text of his own oratory.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
It is so easy to be wild and let love rip; poets get such easy kudos.
STELLA BENSON
Mundos: An Unfinished Novel
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.
STELLA BENSON
attributed, A Shadowy Third
There was a magic in the words. I suppose their power lay in their utter futility.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
You can't discover one foot of clay on an idol without suspecting the other.
STELLA BENSON
Pipers and a Dancer