Hervey Allen

"I lay there in the river for a minute and gave up. When you do that something dies inside."

"Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed, leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the economic system upon which it rested."

"Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void."

"Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded."

"Christ Jesus, when I come to die Grant me a clean, sweet, summer sky, Without the mad winds panther cry. Send me a little garden breeze To gossip in magnolia trees; For I have heard, these fifty years, Confessions muttered at my ears, Till every mumble of the wind Is like tired voices that have sinned."

"Every new generation...is a fresh invasion of savages."

"Between the villages of Aubière and Romagnat in the ancient Province of Auvergne there is an old road that comes suddenly over the top of a high hill. To stand south of this ridge looking up at the highway flowing over the skyline is to receive one of those irrefutable impressions from landscape which requires more than a philosopher to explain. In this case it is undoubtedly, for some reason, one of exalted expectation."

"What is even a wise book but a blast from the lungs made visible to the eyes?"

"Religions change; beer and wine remain."

"Grow up as soon as you can. It pays. The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty, provided of course you are healthy and don’t die. No, the young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits."

"Practise...what I call a decent mammalian philosophy."

"Southward, two mighty ranges of the Appalachians shouldered their way into the blue distance like tremendous caravans marching across eternity."