H.P. Lovecraft

Quotes

• “Some of them stole off to those cryptical realms which are known only to cats and which villagers say are on the moon's ...”
• “Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at th...”
• “Warped and bigoted with preconceived illusions of justice, freedom, and consistency, they cast off the old lore and the ...”
• “Would to Heaven we had never approached them at all, but had run back at top speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with t...”
• “Have only this consolation--that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious b...”
• “May the merciful god, if indeed there be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of ...”
• “The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense ...”
• “As I shivered and brooded on the casting of that brain-blasting shadow, I knew that I had at last pried out one of earth...”
• “There is in certain ancient things a traceOf some dim essence --More than form or weight;A tenuous aether, indeterminate...”
• “That Crawford Tilinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to t...”
• “I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are fe...”
• “The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the ...”
• “That's because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear - the exact sort of...”
• “Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of th...”
• “I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns, and wandered through the open country; sometimes followi...”
• “There are so many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when a...”
• “I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptib...”
• “Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often lie and dream for hours about what I read i...”
• “Only a cynic can create horror--for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despis...”
• “I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernat...”
• “To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drif...”
• “There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When...”
• “Of the animals I saw, I could write volumes. All were wild; for the Great Race's mechanised culture had long since done ...”
• “Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee o...”
• “I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars. . . . I have harnessed the shadows that...”
• “Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and won...”
• “It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the ...”
• “The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me...”
• “The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civ...”
• “Success is a relative thing―and the victory of a boy at marbles is equal to the victory of an Octavius at Actium when me...”
• “I have seen the dark universe yawningWhere the black planets roll without aim,Where they roll in their horror unheeded,W...”
• “For the things in the chair, perfect to the last, subtle detail of microscopic resemblance - or identity - were the face...”
• “The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the l...”
• “If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set first to ...”
• “Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and bar...”
• “When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They co...”
• “There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just withi...”
• “Heaven knows where I'll end up - it's a safe bet I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.”
• “But of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets.”
• “It’s hard to have done all one’s growing up since 33 — but that’s a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”
• “The cat . . . is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe.”
• “If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!”
• “By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk were not beautiful in their sins.”
• “Atal felt a spectral change in the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws.”
• “The daemon wind died down, and the bloated, fungoid moon sank reddeningly in the west.”
• “For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming...”
• “I shall never be very merry or very sad, for I am more prone to analyse than to feel.”
• “I was nearly unnerved at my proximity to a nameless thing at the bottom of a pit.”
• “But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?”
• “When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams.”