JAMES BRANCH CABELL

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

Patriotism is the religion of hell.

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.

Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?

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

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

The religion of Hell is patriotism.

Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day.

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.

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.

What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Trapped dreams must die.

I am willing to taste any drink once.

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.

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.

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

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