Quote

The optimist sees a light at the end of the tunnel, the realist sees a train entering the tunnel, the pessimist sees a train speeding at him, hell for leather, and the machinist sees three idiots sitting on the rail track. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds the pessimist fears this is true.

James Branch Cabell

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James Branch Cabell
Age: 79 †
Born: 1879
Born: April 14
Died: 1958
Died: May 5
Author
Autobiographer
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Richmond
Virginia
True
Idiot
Pessimist
Ends
Sees
Idealism
Proclaims
Light
Track
Leather
Speeding
Best
Train
Optimist
Tunnel
Live
Sitting
Cynicism
Tunnels
World
Hell
Entering
Rail
Possible
Worlds
Realist
Three
Fears
Idiots

More quotes by James Branch Cabell

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There is no gift more great than love.
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People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.
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Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.
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In religious matters a traveller loses nothing by civility.
James Branch Cabell
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At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered.
James Branch Cabell
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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.
James Branch Cabell
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I do that which I do in every place. Here also, at the gateway of that garden into which time has not entered, I fight with time my ever-losing battle, because to do that diverts me.
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Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?
James Branch Cabell
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Every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong
James Branch Cabell
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American literature was enriched with Men Who Loved Allison .... Of the actual and eventual worth of this romance I cannot pretend to be an unprejudiced judge. The tale seems to me one of those many books which have profited, very dubiously indeed, by having obtained, in one way of another, the repute of being indecent.
James Branch Cabell
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But with man the case is otherwise, in that when logic leads to any humiliating conclusion, the sole effect is to discredit logic.
James Branch Cabell
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Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism... It is the Fashion to be a wit... one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction manners are everything, morals nothing.
James Branch Cabell
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No lady is ever a gentleman.
James Branch Cabell
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What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe?
James Branch Cabell
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Thou shalt not offend against the notions of thy neighbor.
James Branch Cabell
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Life is very marvelous... and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.
James Branch Cabell
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A manpossessesnothing certainlysavea brief loanof his own body.
James Branch Cabell
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Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.
James Branch Cabell
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The man was not merely very human he was humanity. And I reflected that it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.
James Branch Cabell
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There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth.
James Branch Cabell