James Branch Cabell Quotes - Page 2

A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.

There is no escaping, at times, the gloomy suspicion that fiddling with pens and ink is, after all, no fit employment for a grown man.

What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.

Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?

No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.

Trapped dreams must die.

Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart.

If we assiduously cultivate our powers of exaggeration, perhaps we, too, shall obtain the Paradise of Liars. And there Raphael shall paint for us scores and scores of his manifestly impossible pictures... and Shakespeare will lie to us of fabulous islands far past 'the still-vex'd Bermoothes,' and bring us fresh tales from the coast of Bohemia. For no one will speak the truth there, and we shall all be perfectly happy.

But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.

Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over; One thing unshaken stays: Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover; Whereby decays, Each thing save one thing: mid this strife diurnal, Of hourly change begot, Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal, And changes not; Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers, Find altered by-and-bye, When, with possession, time anon discovers, Trapped dreams must die, - For he that visions God, of mankind gathers, One manlike trait alone, And reverently imputes to Him a father's love for his son.

People must have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go out of it we must take what we find. That is all.

I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.

I do that which I do in every place. Here also, at the gateway of that garden into which time has not entered, I fight with time my ever-losing battle, because to do that diverts me.

Life is very marvelous... and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.

At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered.

Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism... It is the Fashion to be a wit... one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction; manners are everything, morals nothing.

There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth.

Oh, do the Overlords of Life and Death always provide some obstacle to prevent what all of us have known in youth was possible from ever coming true?

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.

In what else, pray, does man differ from the other animals except in that he is used by words?

I am willing to taste any drink once.

I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.

There is no gift more great than love.

I take it that I must be the eternal playfellow of time. For piety and common-sense and death are rightfully time's toys; and it is with these three that I divert myself.

Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...