“He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within:
So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf,
Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself.”
"Ballad of the Double-Soul"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Context: In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the sky and the sea,
And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling-place, and this was the Gods' decree: — "Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth folly and sin;
He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within:
So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf,
Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself."
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James Branch Cabell 130
American author 1879–1958Related quotes

Source: Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), p. 15

Vol. I, ch. 3
Dead Souls (1842)
Context: As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?

Source: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), p. 262

Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 98-100 (1844)
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Regarding the Nuremberg Trials
New York Times Obituary (October 10, 1954)