107 quotes
If you have been yourself you cannot reasonably be punished, but if you have been somebody else you will find that this is not permitted.
Figures of Earth (1921)
In religious matters a traveller loses nothing by civility.
The Silver Stallion (1926)
The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
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.
The Silver Stallion (1926)
A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual.
Literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.
The Certain Hour (1916)
I am not so wonderful but that in the hour of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness.
Figures of Earth (1921)
These young people were getting a calm and temperate, but a positive, gratification out of being virtuous.
The Silver Stallion (1926)
The transfiguring touch was to come, it seemed from a girl's lips; but it had not; he kissed, and life remained uncharmed.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
All men she must evade at the last and many ar the ways of her elusion.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
I am Manuel, and I follow after my own thinking and my own desire.
Figures of Earth (1921)
I do not seek to copy nature. I, on the contrary, create to divert me such faith and dreams as living among men would tend to destroy.
The Silver Stallion (1926)
This is a strong magic. This is a sententious magic.
The Silver Stallion (1926)
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
If we assiduously cultivate our powers of exaggeration, perhaps we, too, shall obtain the Paradise of Liars.
I had thought the transformation surprising enough when King Ferdinand was turned into a saint, but this tops all!
Figures of Earth (1921)
I am quite content, in this Comedy of Appearances, to follow the old romancers' lead.
Figures of Earth (1921)
James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
I am content. While my shrewd fellows rode about the world to seek and to attain power and wisdom, I have elected, as and unpractical realist, to follow after beauty.
The Silver Stallion (1926)
There is no gift more great than love.
The Silver Stallion (1926)