“No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are…”

— James Branch Cabell , book The Cream of the Jest

The Epilogue : Which is the proper ending of all comedies; and heralds, it may be, an afterpiece.
The Cream of the Jest (1917)
Context: I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are...

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James Branch Cabell 130

American author 1879–1958

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“No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are…”

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James Branch Cabell 130

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