Quotes from James Branch Cabell

alcohol played the midwife

When you consider that presidents and chief-justices and archbishops and kings and statesmen are human beings like you and me and the laundryman, the thought becomes too horrible for humanity to face.

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. (1879-1958)

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

because intelligent persons do not attempt to keep abreast with modern fiction. It is probably ascribable to the fact that they enjoy being intelligent, and wish to remain so.

Our sole concern with the long dead is aesthetic

That moving carcass does but very inadequately symbolizes you....a subtle and immortal spirit.

Now, but these three, cried Jurgen, are the glory of Philistia: and of all that Philistia has produced, it is these three alone, whom living ye made least of, that today are honored wherever art is honored, and where nobody bothers one way or the other about Philistia.

There is, moreover, a sign by which you may distinguish Thragnar. For if you deny what he says, he will promptly concede you are in the right. This was the curse put upon him by Miramon Lluagor, for a detection and a hindrance." "By that unhuman trait," says Jurgen, " Thragnar ought to be very easy to distinguish.

Well, love is very pleasant to observe as he advances, overthrowing all ancient memories with laughter. And yet for each gay lover who concedes the lordship of love, and wears intrepidly love's liveries, the end of all is death.

I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow!

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.

Well, when in Rome, said Jurgen, one must be romantic.

Hah, all we poets write a deal about love: but none of us may grasp the word's full meaning until he reflects that this is a passion mighty enough to induce a woman to put up with him.

Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.

And poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

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

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