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Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7) QUOTES

Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7) QUOTES

1 " Why, it seemed to me I had lost the most of myself; and there was left only a brain which played with ideas, and a body that went delicately down pleasant ways. And I could not believe as my fellows believed, nor could I love them, nor could I detect anything in aught they said or did save their exceeding folly: for I had lost their cordial common faith of what use they made of half-hours and months and years... I had lost faith in the importance of my own actions, too. There was a little time of which the passing might be made endurable; beyond gaped unpredictable darkness: and that was all there was of certainty anywhere. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

2 " 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. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

3 " …nobody can live longer in peace than his neighbor chooses. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

4 " I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow! "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

5 " The religion of Hell is patriotism, and the government is an enlightened democracy. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

6 " So they fought. Now Jurgen was a very acceptable swordsman, but from the start he found in Heitman Michael his master. Jurgen had never reckoned upon that, and he considered it annoying. If Heitman Michael perforated Jurgen the future would be altered, certainly, but not quite as Jurgen had decided it ought to be remodeled. So this unlooked-for complication seemed preposterous, and Jurgen began to be irritated by the suspicion that he was getting himself killed for nothing at all. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

7 " Analogues are all very well, and they have the unanswerable sanction of custom: none the less, when I proclaim that my adored mistress's hair reminds me of gold I am quite consciously lying. It looks like yellow hair, and nothing else: nor would I willingly venture within ten feet of any woman whose head sprouted with wires, of whatever metal. And to protest that her eyes are as gray and fathomless as the sea is very well also, and the sort of thing which seems expected of me: but imagine how horrific would be puddles of water slopping about in a lady's eye-sockets! If we poets could actually behold the monsters we rhyme of, we would scream and run. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

8 " There must be several scores of them in all. It is the sort of spectacle that turns a man to serious thinking. Well, but it is a great comfort to reflect that I dealt fairly with every one of them. Several of them treated me most unjustly, too. But that is past and done with: and I bear no malice toward such fickle and short-sighted creatures as could not be contented with one lover, and he the Jurgen that was! "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

9 " Well, love is very pleasant to observe as he advances, overthrowing all ancient memories with laughter. And yet for each gay lover who concedes the lordship of love, and wears intrepidly love's liveries, the end of all is death. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

10 " There are orthodoxies to be observed in the awakening of every enchanted princess. And Lisa, wherever she may be, poor dear! is nowhere in this neighborhood, because I hear nobody talking. So I may consider myself at liberty to do the traditional thing by this princess. Indeed, it is the only fair thing for me to do, and justice demands it. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

11 " You do not even wish to be tortured?" "Well, I admit I had expected something of the sort. But none the less, I will not make a point of it," said Jurgen, handsomely. "No, I shall be quite satisfied even though you do not torture me at all." And "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

12 " But can one obtain a divorce here?" "Oh, no," said they. "We trafficked in them for a while, but we found that all persons who obtained divorces through our industry promptly thanked Heaven they were free at last. In the face of such ingratitude we gave over that profitless trade, "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

13 " By day he was the Duke of Logreus, which in itself was a notable advance upon pawnbroking: after nightfall he discounted the peculiar privileges of a king. It was the secrecy, the deluding of everybody, which he especially enjoyed: and in the thought of what a monstrous clever fellow was Jurgen, he almost lost sight of the fact that he was miserable over the impending marriage of the lady he loved. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

14 " Then, too, he had a sort of prejudice against the way in which Florimel spent her time in seducing and murdering young men. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

15 " she was the victim of circumstances, and had no choice about becoming a vampire, once the cat had jumped over her coffin. Still, Jurgen always felt, in his illogical masculine way, that her vocation was not nice. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

16 " The religion of Hell is patriotism, and the government is an enlightened democracy. This contented the devils, and Jurgen had learned long ago never to fall out with either of these codes, without which, as the devils were fond of observing, Hell would not be what it is. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

17 " Now grandfather Satan’s wife was called Phyllis: and apart from having wings like a bat’s, she was the loveliest little slip of devilishness that Jurgen had seen in a long while. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

18 " So it was, your majesty, that I forever relinquished my sewing, and became a lovely peril, a flashing desolation, and an evil which smites by night, in spite of my abhorrence of irregular hours: and what I do I dislike extremely, for it is a sad fate to become a vampire, and still to sympathize with your victims, and particularly with their poor mothers. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

19 " Hell stood directly contiguous to Heaven, so that the blessed could augment their felicity by gazing down upon the tortures of the damned. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)

20 " I am Jurgen. And I deal fairly with all women, and raise my staff against none save in the way of kindness. "

― James Branch Cabell , Jurgen (The Biography of Manuel, #7)