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Quote by James Branch Cabell

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The Works of James Branch Cabell: The cream of the jest

This compilation includes a selection of short stories, essays, and novellas by the American author James Branch Cabell, known for his wit and clever wordplay. more

Author

James Branch Cabell
James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell was an American author born on April 14, 1879, and died on May 5, 1958. Known for his unique humor and satirical style, he is considered one of the most innovative writers in American literary history. more

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“A book , once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, both grammatically and actually, whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.”

MeanChildrenBookIndividualParentCuttingReaderPrintedPublication
Book:The Works of James Branch Cabell: Towsend of Lichfield
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“A man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation but in his personality.”

PeopleMenWritingMightPersonalityGeniusConsequenceAreasGenuineTendenciesAffectedImpressSurroundingsTemperamentExhibitsPredeterminedSusceptibility
Book:The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection
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“Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...”

WayFactsRomanceOrderFoundInterestRaceProgressAchieveGrewHappeningsMovedIrrationalClichePuppetsBlundersVolitionDenouement
Author:James Branch Cabell
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“I fight against the gluttony of time with so many very amusing weapons with gestures and with three attitudes and with charming phrases; with tears and with tinsel, and with sugar-coated pills, and with platitudes slightly regilded. Yes, and I fight him also with little mirrors wherein gleam confusedly the corruptions of lust, and ruddy loyalty, and a bit of moonshine, and the pure diamond of the heart's desire, and the opal cloudings of human compromise: but, above all, I fight that ravening dotard with the strength of my own folly.”

HumansHeartLittlesDesireFightingThreeBitsMy OwnAttitudeTearsPureWeaponsMirrorsCorruptionLoyaltyLustCompromisePhrasesFollySugarGesturesDiamondCharmingPillsAmusingGleamGluttonyPlatitudesOpalMoonshineTinsel
Book:The Witch-woman: A Trilogy about Her
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