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

> You must permit that I begin it in my own way, with what may to you at first seem dream-stuff. For I commence at Storisende, in the world's youth, when the fourth Count Emmerick reigned in Poictesme, having not yet blundered into the disfavor of his papal cousin Adrian VII.... With such roundabout gambits alone can some of us approach — as one fancy begets another, if you will — to proud assurance that life is not blind and aimless business; not all a hopeless waste and confusion; and that we ourselves may (by and by) be strong and excellent and wise.

- 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/you-must-permit

## 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)