86 Quotes by James Branch Cabell

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

No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.

So it was, your majesty, that I forever relinquished my sewing, and became a lovely peril, a flashing desolation, and an evil which smites by night, in spite of my abhorrence of irregular hours: and what I do I dislike extremely, for it is a sad fate to become a vampire, and still to sympathize with your victims, and particularly with their poor mothers.

alcohol played the midwife

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

...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

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.

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