# Quote — James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion

> I consider the saga of no lord of the Silver Stallion to be worth squabbling over. Your sagas in the end must all be perverted and engulfed by the great legend about Manuel. No matter how you strive against that legend, it will conquer: no matter what you may do or suffer, my doomed Guivric, your saga will be recast until it conforms in everything to the legend begotten by the terrified imaginings of a lost child. For men dare not face the universe with no better backing than their own resources; all men that live, and that go perforce about this world like blundering lost children whose rescuer is not yet in sight, have a vital need to believe in this sustaining legend about the Redeemer: and the wickedness and the foolishness of no man can avail against the fond optimism of mankind.

- Author: [James Branch Cabell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell.md)
- Book: [The Silver Stallion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-silver-stallion.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell#The_Silver_Stallion_(1926)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-silver-stallion/i-consider-the

## More from this book

> Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain with electing for peculiarity among one's fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.
>
> Even Coth saw that.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-silver-stallion/everywhere-in-the.md)

> I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-silver-stallion/i-have-followed.md)

> I must, here again, in mere honesty, I must distinguish. I mean that I think you know, as well as I do, love is not a gift which any man can give nor any person hope long to retain. Ah, no, madame! we shrug, we smilingly allow romanticists their catchwords: meanwhile it remains the veriest axiom, among realists like you and me, that love too is but a loan.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-branch-cabell/the-silver-stallion/i-must-here.md)