James Gould Cozzens quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by James Gould Cozzens

Top James Gould Cozzens Quotes

Browse top 10 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by James Gould Cozzens.

Favorite James Gould Cozzens Quotes

1. "Finally, spurred by the appetite to which he was indifferent, he took any one, read the printing on the parti-colored label of paper. He held the soup can like a skull; and at once he did not want it. The soup was made from celery. Mr. Lecky put it back. He stood in mild misery, harassed again by the plague of a will impotent in its restored freedom.If the mind cannot direct, it can be cunning to protect its ease. Mr. Lecky now proposed a fantastic pact to himself. He shut his eyes. He reached again and took a can. Eyes still shut, he ripped the label from it, crumpled and threw away the paper. Now he could not tell what he had until he opened it." ~ James Gould Cozzens

2. "Whether he remained here, or found a means to leave, he ought certainly to possess himself of the best possible weapons. By the term Mr. Lecky understood some sort of firearm. The fact that he was totally unacquainted with the use of guns assisted him in the illusion that, given a revolver, he would instantly become formidable. Trusting machines as he did, he regarded a revolver as a small killing machine. He believed that its operation required little more than pointing and pulling a trigger. The revolver would obediently deliver, unerring and fast as light, death to a great distance." ~ James Gould Cozzens

3. "Mr. Lecky never got any farther than the third floor. Not conscious of impossible fatigue, feeling less than his distress of the morning, he was notwithstanding seized by a faintness. This sudden spinning dizzied him. A darkness as impalpable, more discrete, yet blacker than night's, spun out from dancing points to overlapping disks. They were so wide, so close to his eyes, that he could not strike them off. He had only a second given him to see and apprehend. This same second loosened his grip on consciousness. He seemed to let go, hardly struggling. His muscles let go everywhere, too. He had time to hear, like some remote accident, the bang of the shotgun, gone, the smash of glass in at least one flashlight lens. This was the thin segment of the actual second, and Mr. Lecky knew nothing of himself slumping to lie on the stairs with the things he had dropped." ~ James Gould Cozzens

4. "I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up." ~ James Gould Cozzens

5. "If a man felt hostility and aversion, but saw that he had poor or no grounds for his feeling, the remedy was to look for good or at least better grounds--a search hid predisposing thoughts would help him in." ~ James Gould Cozzens

6. "The innocent supposition, entertained by most people, that even if they are not brilliant, they are not dumb, is correct only in a very relative sense." ~ James Gould Cozzens

7. "Mr. Lecky had proceeded quickly for several moments before he drew up, shocked. A few more steps and he might have stumbled on his idiot, for the stairs he had been approaching were the front stairs to the silverware department, which he wished to avoid. Shaken by this unpleasant mistake, he re-directed himself, turning back down the center of the dark floor. Certainly he did not want to see the corpse; the corpse could not very well want to see him." ~ James Gould Cozzens

8. "Mr. Lecky could see well enough to eat. He brought his chair over and sat down gratefully while he consumed, but with appetite now, the ham and biscuits which he had disdained in the morning. Even the fact that he was using to cut his ham the knife which had cut a human throat did not disturb him. He had taken care to see that the blade was wiped clean." ~ James Gould Cozzens

9. "At Childerstown High School and at college he had never led his class nor taken prizes; but, without being aware that he did, he really blamed this on his failure to work hard, or any harder than he needed to. . . . What he did not know, what Paul Bonbright, among others, showed him, was that those abilities of his that got him, without distinction but also without much exertion, through all previous lessons and examinations, were not first rate abilities handicapped by laziness, but second rate, by no degree of effort or assiduity to be made the equal of abilities like Bonbright's." ~ James Gould Cozzens

10. "Bailey might not have great intelligence or abilities, but his whole aim, thought and study was that of the born leader--to look out for himself; and he did it with that born-leader's confidence and intensity that draws along the ordinary uncertain man, who soon confuses his own interest and his own safety with that of the leader." ~ James Gould Cozzens

James Gould Cozzens Quotes Pictures

<< Joe Schreiber Quotes

Leslie Jamison Quotes >>

Today's Quote

It happened in pieces, tiny little turning points. I'll never figure out when it all turned, because it wasn't a single moments. It doesn't matter how many times I look back, how many times I try to figure it out. There is no before and after. Just a year of choices."
Author: Amanda Grace