Top 11 Quotes & Sayings by Hervey Allen

In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be colonized.

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.

Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.

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.

Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

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

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

Between the villages of Aubiere 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.

Religions change; beer and wine remain.

Some of the shells brought my heart into my mouth; lying there waiting for them was intolerable. I was sure I was going to be blown to pieces.