James Branch Cabell Quotes

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Rationally, I was convinced that the universe without God made no sense, but that simply was not the same as believing. But I also knew that I could not argue myself, or be argued, into faith.

The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves at home on this earth.

Is it not better to intimate our astonishment as we pass through this world if it be only for a moment ere we are swallowed up in the yeast of the abyss? I will lift up my hands and say Kosmos.

Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason.

If there is no God there is no hereafter. When, therefore, one drives God out of the universe he closes the door of hope upon himself.

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

And if someone doesn’t believe in any afterlife?” I asked. Walt gave me a sad look. “Then that’s what they experience.

A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.

Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.

[Søren ] Kierkegaard said it for me a long time ago. He said, 'You can't really think yourself into a faith, into a religion. It's something you have to make a leap into faith.' And I've never been able to do that. I wish I could. Then maybe I could believe in an afterlife.

Either the world is so tiny or we are enormous; in either case, we fill it completely.

If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them

I have always been a firm believer in God and the power of prayer, though to be honest, my faith has made for alist of questions I definitely want answered after I'm gone.

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian.

The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything especially as I am now so much occupied with theology but I don't see my way to your conclusion.

Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.

You are not just a meaningless fragment in an alien universe, briefly suspended between life and death, allowed a few short-lived pleasures followed by pain and ultimate annihilation.

We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead - like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe - far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.

I just became fascinated with how complex and unlikely the universe is and life is and Catholicism gives me an answer to that.

You can be distracted by your love life, by the baseball game, movies, by the nonsense. "Can I get my kid into this private school? Can I get this girl to go out with me Saturday night? Am I going to get the promotion in my office?" All this stuff, but in the end the universe burns out. So I think it's completely meaningless.