Frasi di James Branch Cabell

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"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Contesto: The Dream, as I now know, is not best served by making parodies of it, and it does not greatly matter after all whether a book be an epic or a directory. What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts.... But you, I think, have always comprehended this.

The Epilogue : Which is the proper ending of all comedies; and heralds, it may be, an afterpiece.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Contesto: I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are...

The Judging of Jurgen (1920)
Contesto: In Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms,… the tumblebug explained. — I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other countries.…

Afterpiece : a hidden inscription on the Sigil of Scoteia (and so spelled, in a peculiar modification of Roman capital letters)
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Contesto: James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty. Ettarre stays inaccessible always and her lovliness is his to look on only in his dreams. All men she must evade at the last and many ar the ways of her elusion.

Naifer and Manuel, in Ch. II : Niafer
Figures of Earth (1921)

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

Epigraph to "Book Four : Which Travels, roundabout, to edifying and safe conclusions"
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

"Richard Fentnor Harroby" in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

Gonfal, in Book Two : The Mathematics of Gonfal, Ch. X : Relative to Gonfal's Head
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Horvendile, to Ettarre in Ch. 2 : Introduces the Ageless Woman
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)

Kerin, in Book Seven : What Saraïde Wanted, Ch. XLII : Generalities at Ogde
The Silver Stallion (1926)

"Richard Fentnor Harroby" in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Contesto: I also begin where he began, and follow wither the dream led him. Meanwhile, I can but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.

"The Comedies of William Congreve" in William and Mary College Monthly (September 1897), V, p. 41, as quoted in "James Branch Cabell at William and Mary: the Education of a Novelist," by William L. Godshalk in The William and Mary Review, 5 (1967); reprinted in Kalki, Vol II, No.4, Whole No.8 (1968) http://www.silverstallion.karkeeweb.com/kalki_archives/kalki_from.html

Epigraph to "The Epilogue : Which is the proper ending of all comedies; and heralds, it may be, an afterpiece."
The Cream of the Jest (1917)

Epigraph, based upon the style of Samuel Johnson in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), using a fictional reference to Imlac the philosopher in Johnson's tale.
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)

Origine: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 26 : "Epper Si Muove" [this chapter title is derived from a purported comment of Galileo: Eppur Si Muove "And yet it moves."]

Horvendile, in The High Place : A Comedy of Disenchantment (1923), Ch. XVI: Some Victims of Flamberge.

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

Manuel, in Ch. XXXIX : The Passing of Manuel
Figures of Earth (1921)

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

Book Five : "Mundus Vult Decepi", Ch. XXIX : The Grumbler's Progress
The Silver Stallion (1926)

A rhyme he made to indicate the proper pronunciation of his name, as quoted in The Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962) edited by Max J. Herzburg, p. 132

Miramon, in Ch. XXXII : The Redemption of Poictesme
Figures of Earth (1921)

Beyond Life (1919) Ch. VI : Which Values the Candle, § 2, p. 173

Coth, in Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Ch. XX : Idolatry of an Alderman
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Miramon, in Ch. IV : In the Doubtful Palace
Figures of Earth (1921)