James Branch Cabell

I ask of literature precisely those things of which I feel the lack in my own life.

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

Patriotism is the religion of hell.

There is no memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

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

alcohol played the midwife

Our sole concern with the long dead is aesthetic

...[we] has left nothing durable to signalize his stay upon this planet.[we]eventually dies to the honest regret of [our] associates.

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

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