James Branch Cabell
Patriotism is the religion of hell.Collection: Religion
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.Collection: Best
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.Collection: Poetry
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.
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.
People marry for a variety of reasons and with varying results. But to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy.
No lady is ever a gentleman.
Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?
People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.Collection: Believe
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."Collection: Tunnels
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.Collection: Life
The only way of rendering life endurable is to drink as much wine as one can come by.Collection: Wine
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.Collection: Children
Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.Collection: Mirrors
For although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the ruin of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say so.Collection: War
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.Collection: Optimistic
Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Men
Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood.Collection: Life
The touch of time does more than the club of Hercules.Collection: Time
Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams .Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Fate
What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe?Collection: Prejudice
People marry through a variety of other reasons, and with varying results: but to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy.Collection: Marriage
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.Collection: Loyalty
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.Collection: Loneliness
A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.Collection: Body
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Life
Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?Collection: Appreciation
No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.Collection: Quality
Trapped dreams must die.Collection: Dream
Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Liars
But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Heaven
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.Collection: Fighting
Life is very marvelous... and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.Collection: Life
At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Fashion
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.Collection: Littles
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?Collection: Life And Death
The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.Collection: Beautiful
In what else, pray, does man differ from the other animals except in that he is used by words?Collection: Animal
I am willing to taste any drink once.Collection: Taste
I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.Collection: Lying