# Quote — James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest

> I quite fixedly believe the Wardens of Earth sometimes unbar strange windows, that face on other worlds than ours. And some of us, I think, once in a while get a peep through these windows. But we are not permitted to get a long peep, or an unobstructed peep, nor very certainly, are we permitted to see all there is — out yonder. The fatal fault, sir, of your theorizing is that it is too complete. It aims to throw light upon the universe, and therefore is self-evidently moonshine. The Wardens of Earth do not desire that we should understand the universe, Mr. Kennaston; it is part of Their appointed task to insure that we never do; and because of Their efficiency every notion that any man, dead, living, or unborn, might form as to the universe will necessarily prove wrong.

- Author: [James Branch Cabell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell.md)
- Book: [The Cream of the Jest](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell#The_Cream_of_the_Jest_(1917)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest/i-quite-fixedly

## More from this book

> Dreaming a dream to prize,
>
> Is wishing ghosts to rise;
>
> And, if I had the spell
>
> To call the buried — well,
>
> Which one would I?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest/dreaming-a-dream.md)

> Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest/kennaston-no-longer.md)

> It was not his to choose from what volume or on which page thereof he would read; accident, as it seemed, decided that; but the chance-opened page lay unblurred before him, and he saw it with a clarity denied to other men of his generation.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-cream-of-the-jest/it-was-not.md)