I have read that the secret ...

I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.
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 James Branch Cabell

Quotes from the same author

Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism... It is the Fashion to be a wit... one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction; manners are everything, morals nothing.
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 James Branch Cabell
Why is the King of Hearts the only one that hasn't a moustache?
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 James Branch Cabell
Good and evil keep very exact accounts... and the face of every man is their ledger.
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 James Branch Cabell
Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest...
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 James Branch Cabell
While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction.
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 James Branch Cabell