James Branch Cabell Quotes

Hey, my masters, lords and brothers, ye that till the fields of rhyme, Are ye deaf ye will not hearken to the clamor of your time?

Nay, 'tis not fitting that we should require Within this World but Raiment, Food and Fire; Powerless Atoms of Eternity Why should we hope to know of Something higher? <p> This Knowledge could but add, not lessen. Woe; The Magian who To-day forms fire with snow Shares with the Sudra in Infinity. We come from Nothing and to Nothing go.<p> So best consent, although with forced grace, Upon this dingy Ball to run our race Untrammeled with the thoughts of higher things, Until we reach the shadowy Stopping place.

Then, too, he had a sort of prejudice against the way in which Florimel spent her time in seducing and murdering young men.

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

I am Jurgen. And I deal fairly with all women, and raise my staff against none save in the way of kindness.

the general public enjoys reading any book, of any kind, that is being read by the public generally, through much that herd instinct for doing what everybody else is doing, which exalts sane women upon three-inch heels, and attaches buttons to the sleeves and coat-tails of presumably intelligent men.

Dreaming a dream to prize, Is wishing ghosts to rise; And, if I had the spell To call the buried — well, Which one would I?

You embody all that I was ever able to conceive of beauty and fearlessness and strange purity. Therefore it is evident I do not see in you merely Count Emmerick's third sister, but, instead, that ageless lovable and loving woman long worshipped and sought everywhere in vain by all poets.

You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer, hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored! They have discarded you utterly.

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

The only way of rendering life endurable is to drink as much wine as one can come by.

I can but repeat that art is not a branch of pedagogy!

My immortality has sharp restrictions. For it is at a price that I pass down the years, as yet, in eternal union with the witch-woman whose magic stays — as yet — more strong than the magic of time. The price is that I only of her lovers many not ever hope to win Ettare. This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take... So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless.

I agree with Freydis that, for various reasons, nobody ever, quite, knew Manuel well. The hero of "The Silver Stallion" is, thus, no person, but an idea, — an idea presented at the moment of its conception... I mean, of course, the idea that Manuel, who was yesterday the physical Redeemer of Poictesme, will by and by return as his people's spiritual Redeemer.

At what cost, now, may one attempt to write perfectly of beautiful happenings?