James Branch Cabell quotes - page 4

A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, both grammatically and actually, whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it. (James Branch Cabell)
I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.
James Branch Cabell
I am Manuel. I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the difference is that I have known it. Now it is necessary for me, as it is necessary for all men, to die in this same loneliness, and I know that there is no help for it.
James Branch Cabell
Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
James Branch Cabell
A novel, or indeed any work of art, is not intended to be a literal transcription from Nature.
James Branch Cabell
The insect looked at Jurgen, and its pincers rose erect in horror.
James Branch Cabell
I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me - that everything in life is miraculous.
James Branch Cabell
I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon.
James Branch Cabell
I shall never of my own free will expose the naked soul of Manuel to anybody.
James Branch Cabell
To-day alone was real. Never was man brought into contact with reality save through the evanescent emotions and sensations of that single moment, that infinitesimal fraction of a second, which was passing now - and it was in the insignificance of this moment, precisely, that religious persons must believe.
James Branch Cabell
All men she must evade at the last and many ar the ways of her elusion. (James Branch Cabell)
I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all.
James Branch Cabell
Each in his day, and within howsoever limited a circle of adherents, awakened that sustaining faith which appears vitally necessary to men's contentment, in the legend of the all powerful Redeemer who will come again, to-morrow.
James Branch Cabell
It is true I have not told you everything. Why should I? No Author ever does....
James Branch Cabell
I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours.
James Branch Cabell
This is a strong magic.This is a sententious magic.
James Branch Cabell
Cease from sonneting, my brothers; let us fashion songs from life.
James Branch Cabell
I seem to see drowned there the loves and the desires and the adventures I had when I wore another body than this. For the water of Haranton, I must tell you, is not like the water of other fountains, and curious dreams engender in this pool.
James Branch Cabell
I am Manuel, and I follow after my own thinking and my own desire.
James Branch Cabell
I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten.
James Branch Cabell
At the gate of the garden, beside the lingham post which stood there in eternal erection, sat a boy who was diverting himself by whittling, with a small green-handled knife, a bit of cedar-wood into the quaint shaping which the post had. (James Branch Cabell)
It is necessary that I climb very high because of my love for you, and upon the heights there is silence.
James Branch Cabell
The little silver effigies which his postulants fashion and adore are well enough: but Kalki is a horse of another color.
James Branch Cabell
If we assiduously cultivate our powers of exaggeration, perhaps we, too, shall obtain the Paradise of Liars.
James Branch Cabell
You must permit that I begin it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff.
James Branch Cabell