Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
So far as English versification is concerned, Pope was the world, and all the world was Pope.
Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.
Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.
Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal
Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.
I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
Nyarlathotep . . . the crawling chaos . . . I am the last . . . I will tell the audient void. . . .
Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream.
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.
It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all.
As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence.
Nothing matters, but it's perhaps more comfortable to keep calm and not interfere with other people.
If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.
It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre.
I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night.
Maybe, just maybe, I should not have used the word "eldritch" so many times now that I think about it.
The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.
Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.
And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.
The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
Horrors, I believe, should be original - the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.
Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.
We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.
If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!
Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
One superlatively important effect of wide reading is the enlargement of vocabulary which always accompanies it.
To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.
Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other.
I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.
In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call "happiness", if we be but able to entertain them.
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
All rationalism tends to minimalise the value and the importance of life and to decrease the sum total of human happiness.
Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions.
In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.
With hidden powers of unknown extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town.
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything.
No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.
Race prejudice is a gift of nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.
Heaven knows where I'll end up - but it's a safe bet that I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.
It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.
Uncertainty and danger are always closely allied, thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.
There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.
That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.
No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood.
In writing a weird story, I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere and place the emphasis where it belongs.
What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!