James Branch Cabell quotes - page 5

The Dream, as I now know, is not best served by making parodies of it. (James Branch Cabell)
I do not seek to copy nature. I, on the contrary, create to divert me such faith and dreams as living among men would tend to destroy. View quote
James Branch Cabell
People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different. View quote
James Branch Cabell
I agree with Freydis that, for various reasons, nobody ever, quite, knew Manuel well. The hero of "The Silver Stallion" is, thus, no person, but an idea. View quote
James Branch Cabell
I have modeled and remodeled, and cannot get exactly to my liking. So it is necessary that I keep laboring at it, until the figure is to my thinking and my desire. View quote
James Branch Cabell
I seem to see only the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who has reeled blunderingly from mystery to mystery. View quote
James Branch Cabell
I am not so wonderful but that in the hour of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness. View quote
James Branch Cabell
Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal, And changes not; -. View quote
James Branch Cabell
I had thought the transformation surprising enough when King Ferdinand was turned into a saint, but this tops all! View quote
James Branch Cabell
He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within: So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf, Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself. View quote
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. (James Branch Cabell)
If you have been yourself you cannot reasonably be punished, but if you have been somebody else you will find that this is not permitted. View quote
James Branch Cabell
So Florimel extinguished the candle, with a good-will that delighted Jurgen. View quote
James Branch Cabell
Powerless Atoms of Eternity Why should we hope to know of Something higher? View quote
James Branch Cabell
He had a quiet way with the girls, and with the men a way of solemn, blinking simplicity which caused the more hasty in judgment to consider him a fool. View quote
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. View quote
James Branch Cabell
Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over books. View quote
James Branch Cabell
These young people were getting a calm and temperate, but a positive, gratification out of being virtuous. View quote
James Branch Cabell
This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take... So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time - as yet - remains powerless. View quote
James Branch Cabell
The Magian who To-day forms fire with snow Shares with the Sudra in Infinity. View quote
James Branch Cabell
Well, let us conquer as we may, so that God be on our side. (James Branch Cabell)
The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so. View quote
James Branch Cabell
The Wardens without fail arrange what we call - gravely, too - "some natural explanation." View quote
James Branch Cabell
And one is fain to be climbing where only angels have trod, But is fettered and tied to another's side who fears that it might look odd. View quote
James Branch Cabell
Nothing ... nothing in the universe, is of any importance, or is authentic to any serious sense, except the illusions of romance. View quote
James Branch Cabell