86 Quotes by James Branch Cabell

People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

And one would worship a woman whom all perfections dower, But the other smiles at transparent wiles; and he quotes from Schopenhauer. Thus two by two we wrangle and blunder about the earth, And that body we share we may not spare; but the Gods have need of mirth.

Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn’t a moustache?

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

I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books – brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity.

Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, and, therefore, why shouldn’t I have changed a trifle?

I take it that I must be the eternal playfellow of time. For piety and common-sense and death are rightfully time’s toys; and it is with these three that I divert myself.

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.