James Branch Cabell Quotes
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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.
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If the Author will it, there may be appended to any comedy an afterpiece. Meanwhile, so far as I may judge, the life of Manuel ends here.
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I am Manuel, and I follow after my own thinking and my own desire. Of course it is very fine of me to be renouncing so much wealth and power for the sake of my wonderful dear Niafer: but she is worth the sacrifice, and, besides, she is witnessing all this magnanimity, and cannot well fail to be impressed.
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From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled, Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands, - Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart, Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him, Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way.
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Life is very marvelous … and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.
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They tell me that truth lies somewhere at the bottom of a well, and at virtually the door of our home is a most notable if long dried well. Our location is thus quite favorable, if we but keep patience.
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The man was not merely very human; he was humanity. And I reflected that it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.
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Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
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James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty. Ettarre stays inaccessible always and her lovliness is his to look on only in his dreams. All men she must evade at the last and many ar the ways of her elusion.
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People marry for a variety of reasons and with varying results. But to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy.
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I am not so wonderful but that in the hour of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness. Look you, Niafer, I had thought I would be changed when I had become a famous champion, but for all that I stand posturing here with this long sword, and am master of the hour and of the future, I remain the boy that last Thursday was tending pigs.
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Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?
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I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.
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There is no gift more great than love.
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Coth admitted that, say what you might as to the Manuel who had really lived, the squinting rascal did as a rule know what he was talking about.
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The touch of time does more than the club of Hercules.
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You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer, hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored! They have discarded you utterly.
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The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills - and as immortal.
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Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a certain moment by a work wherein the writer himself noted the impression of the world which he received at a certain hour.
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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.
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I am content. While my shrewd fellows rode about the world to seek and to attain power and wisdom, I have elected, as and unpractical realist, to follow after beauty.
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Patriotism is the religion of hell.
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Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him; - That is, when they remember he still exists. Who. you ask, is this fellow? - What matter names? He is only a scribbler who is content.
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Always the fact remains that to the mentally indolent this book may well seem a volume of disconnected short stories. All of us being more or less mentally indolent, this possibility constitutes a dire fault.