Quotes by James Branch Cabell

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.

Book

Children

Mean

A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times’ tendencies, not merely in his writings where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation but in his personality.

Men

People

Writing

A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.

Body

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.

Book

Judging

Men

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.

Needs

Perfection

Two

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

Belief

Doe

Indispensable

At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered.

Events

Mean

But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.

Logic

Men

Sole

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.

Labels

Optimism

Optimistic

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

Form

Men

Might

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Animal

Appreciation

Art

Attitude

Battle

Bazaars

Beautiful

Belief

Believe

Body

Book

Break

Captains

Children

Civility

Clubs

Common Sense

Criticism

Dies

Differences

Doe

Dream

Drink

Earth

Effort

Escaping

Events

Evil

Faces

Fashion

Fate

Father

Feels

Fighting

Footprint

Form

Garden

Gentleman

Have Faith

Heart

Heaven

Hell

History

Humanity

Important

Indispensable

Ink

Irony

Judging

Kings

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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Quotes by James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell

A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.

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.

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

At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered.

But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.

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.

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

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