61+ James Branch Cabell Quotes On Slavery, Fantasy And Satire

James Branch Cabell was an American novelist, poet, and essayist. He wrote fantasy fiction that blended elements of myth and realism. His most famous work is the 1919 novel Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice. Following is our collection on famous quotes by James Branch Cabell on slavery, leadership, love.

Top 10 James Branch Cabell Quotes

1. Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
2. No lady is ever a gentleman.
3. Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?
4. There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
5. Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?
6. Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.
7. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.
8. Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart.
9. But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.
10. 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.

James Branch Cabell Short Quotes

• In what else, pray, does man differ from the other animals except in that he is used by words?
• Thou shalt not offend against the notions of thy neighbor.
• A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.
• Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams .
• I am willing to taste any drink once.
• Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.
• People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.
• Life is very marvelous... and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.
• Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.
• The only way of rendering life endurable is to drink as much wine as one can come by.

James Branch Cabell Quotes About Love

People marry for a variety of reasons and with varying results. But to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy. — James Branch Cabell

There is no gift more great than love. — James Branch Cabell

Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell Quotes About Worlds

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. — James Branch Cabell

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. — 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

James Branch Cabell Quotes About Live

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure. — 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

Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong — James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell Famous Quotes And Sayings

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true." — James Branch Cabell

What is man that his welfare be considered? An ape who chatters of kinship with the archangels while he very filthily digs for groundnuts. And yet I perceive that this same man is a maimed God. He is condemned under penalty to measure eternity with an hourglass and infinity with a yardstick and what is more, he very nearly does it. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

The realization that life is absurdand cannot be an end, but only abeginning. This is a truth nearly allgreat minds have taken as their starting point. — James Branch Cabell

In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the sky and the sea, And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling-place, and this was the Gods' decree: "Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth folly and sin; 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. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered. — James Branch Cabell

I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in my own life. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

The touch of time does more than the club of Hercules. — James Branch Cabell

American literature was enriched with Men Who Loved Allison .... Of the actual and eventual worth of this romance I cannot pretend to be an unprejudiced judge. The tale seems to me one of those many books which have profited, very dubiously indeed, by having obtained, in one way of another, the repute of being indecent. — James Branch Cabell

As it is, plain reasoning assures me I am not indispensable to the universe: but with this reasoning, somehow, does not travel my belief. — James Branch Cabell

And one would worship a woman whom all perfections dower, But the other smiles at transparent wiles; and he quotes from Schopenhauer . Thus two by two we wrangle and blunder about the earth, And that body we share we may not spare; but the Gods have need of mirth. — James Branch Cabell

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

What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe? — James Branch Cabell

Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day. — James Branch Cabell

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

In religious matters a traveller loses nothing by civility. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

Some few there must be in every age and every land of whom life claims nothing very insistently save that they write perfectly of beautiful happenings. — James Branch Cabell

I fear You and, yes, I love You: and yet I cannot believe. Why could You not let me believe, where so many believed? Or else, why could You not let me deride, as the remainder derided so noisily? O God, why could You not let me have faith? for You gave me no faith in anything, not even in nothingness. It was not fair. — James Branch Cabell

I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books — brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity. — James Branch Cabell

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

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? — James Branch Cabell

Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken atwill from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. — James Branch Cabell

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

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. — James Branch Cabell

Patriotism is the religion of hell. — James Branch Cabell

Trapped dreams must die. — James Branch Cabell

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. — James Branch Cabell

Life Lessons by James Branch Cabell

1. James Branch Cabell's works emphasize the importance of living life with purpose and striving for personal growth. He encourages readers to take risks and explore their own capabilities, as well as to be mindful of the consequences of their actions. Through his stories, Cabell encourages readers to remain resilient in the face of adversity and to never give up on their dreams.
2. James Branch Cabell teaches readers to be open-minded and to think critically about the world around them. He encourages readers to challenge their preconceived notions and to explore different perspectives. He also emphasizes the importance of staying true to oneself and never compromising one's values.
3. James Branch Cabell encourages readers to take responsibility for their actions and to be mindful of the power of words. He emphasizes the