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H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft Quotes

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Famous H. P. Lovecraft Quotes

“Pessimists are just as illogical as optimists; insomuch as both envisage the aims of mankind as unified, and as having a direct relationship (either of frustration or of fulfilment) to the inevitable flow of terrestrial motivation and events. That is - both schools retain in a vestigial way the primitive concept of a conscious teleology - of a cosmos which gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitos, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.”

MenWayWantGivingSchoolFormMotivationEnergyTreeMankindDogEventsConsciousConceptsFlowDirectUltimateHorseAimOne WayInevitableWelfareDamnFrustrationCosmosPrimitiveRatsOptimistPessimistUnifiedFulfilmentIllogicalFungiLice
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.”

KnowsSometimesLife IsBehindsBackgroundsPeersHintsHideous
Book:H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ The Complete Fiction in One Volume: The Call of Cthulhu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror and Many More: The Whisperer in Darkness, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Rats in the Walls, The Shunned House, The Shadow Out of Time, The Alchemist, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Silver Key, The Templeäó_
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“My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time.”

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Book:H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ The Complete Fiction in One Volume: The Call of Cthulhu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror and Many More: The Whisperer in Darkness, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Rats in the Walls, The Shunned House, The Shadow Out of Time, The Alchemist, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Silver Key, The Templeäó_
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“The monotony of a long heroic poem may often be pleasantly relieved by judicious interruptions in the perfect successions of rhymes, just as the metre may sometimes be adorned with occasional triplets and Alexandrines.”

MayLongSometimesPerfectHeroicRhymeOccasionalSuccessionRelievedOften IsInterruptionsMonotonyTriplet
Book:H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)
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“The unknown ... became for our primitive forefathers a terrible and omnipotent source of boons and calamities visited upon mankind for cryptic and wholly extra-terrestrial reasons, and thus clearly belonging to spheres of existence whereof we know nothing and wherein we have no part.”

KnowsReasonExistenceMankindSourceTerribleExtrasBelongingSpheresPrimitiveCalamityForefathersOmnipotentBoonCryptic
Book:The Classic Horror Stories
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“Time, space, and natural law hold for me suggestions of intolerable bondage, and I can form no picture of emotional satisfaction which does not involve their defeat - especially the defeat of time, so that one may merge oneself with the whole historic stream and be wholly emancipated from the transient and the ephemeral.”

MayDoeI CanWholeFormLawNaturalSpaceEmotionalDefeatOneselfSatisfactionStreamsSuggestionsBondageHistoricTransientNatural LawEphemeral
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Everything I loved had been dead for two centuries - or, as in the case of Graeco-Roman classicism, for two milenniums. I am never a part of anything around me - in everything I am an outsider. Should I find it possible to crawl backward through the Halls of Time to that age which is nearest my own fancy, I should doubtless be bawled out of the coffee-houses for heresy in religion, or else lampooned by John Dennis till I found refuge in the deep, silent Thames, that covers many another unfortunate.”

ShouldTwoAgeFoundHouseMy OwnCasesCenturySilentCoffeeFancyHallsOutsidersRefugeShould IUnfortunateHeresyThamesClassicismCoffee Houses
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely confessing my own weakness. The reason I can't write other kinds is not that I don't value & respect them, but merely that my slender set of endowments does not enable me to extract a compellingly acute personal sense of interest & drama from the natural phenomena of life.”

WritingTryingKindDoeI CanReasonValuesInterestNaturalMy OwnFictionDramaWeaknessMediumsEndowmentSlenderConfessingNatural Phenomena
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Uncertainty and danger are always closely allied, thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.”

WorldKindEvilDangerPossibilityUncertaintyPerilUnknown Worlds
Book:H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ Ultimate Collection: 120+ Works ALL in One Volume: Complete Novellas & Short Stories, Juvenilia, Poetry, Essays & Collaborations: The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, Dagon, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Outsider, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Cats of Ultharäó_
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“I should describe mine own nature as tripartite, my interests consisting of three parallel and dissociated groups - (a) Love of the strange and fantastic. (b) Love of the abstract truth and of scientific logick. (c) Love of the ancient and the permanent. Sundry combinations of these three strains will probably account for all my odd tastes and eccentricities.”

ShouldThreeInterestGroupsMinesStrangeTasteLogicAccountsAncientFantasticCombinationPermanentOddAbstractStrainParallelsEccentricity
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme.”

MenShouldMindTwoCertainPracticeCenturyHe ManExpressionDemandEssentialsErrorsCompositionSmoothRestraintRhymeFreedom Of ExpressionPrecedentSpiritedStimulationEmploying
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre "kick". Here is material for a really profound study in group-neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination.”

NightBlackImaginationExistenceStudyGroupsMaterialsProfoundDenyKicksPacksStreaksPuritanMorbidMassachusettsMacabre
Book:Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
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“Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.”

MenWorldMindMayChildrenStarsDarkStrangePressesImpulseSensitiveDimensionsGlobesGlimpseHereditaryBeyond The StarsMoonstruck
Book:At the Mountains of Madness: The Definitive Edition
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“I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearances and actualities. I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake--whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain.”

KnowsRealDreamLawDesireMy OwnBrainEnvironmentProductsAppearanceReal LifePermanentAwakeDistinctionRecogniseActualityTransitory
Book:Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
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“The phenomenon of dreaming ... helped to build up the notion of an unreal or spiritual world; and in general, all the conditions of savage dawn-life so strongly conduced toward a feeling of the supernatural, that we need not wonder at the thoroughness with which man's very hereditary essence has become saturated with religion and superstition.”

MenWorldNeedsFeelingsDreamSpiritualWonderConditionsEssenceNotionDawnPhenomenonSuperstitionsSavagesUnrealHereditarySaturatedThoroughness
Book:Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated)
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“It is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now - but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived.”

RealDreamSidesImaginationMemoriesKnownHorrorNightmareCosmicAbyssInfantLeaving MeHideousStarksClutchNever Leave Me
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses them and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror - for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.”

WritingHumansRealStoriesForceImaginationPerfectRaceBehindsVisionPiecesMagicStyleHorrorSceneIllusionDrivingPsychologicalHuman RaceCharacteristicsDespiseMasterpieceDetachmentDistortionMockMorbidCynicReal PowerPrisms
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Behold great Whitman, whose licentious line Delights the rake, and warms the souls of swine; Whose fever'd fancy shuns the measur'd pace, And copies Ovid's filth without his grace. In his rough brain a genius might have grown, Had he not sought to play the brute alone; But void of shame, he let his wit run wild, And liv'd and wrote as Adam's bestial child.”

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Book:The Conservative
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“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind--yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy.”

IfsMindChildrenHas BeensFactsWould BeFormAcceptingFeetProofSufficientMatureAcceptableFavourInfantFlexibleInfancyCrippled
Book:Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
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“I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing--it is all a matter of harmony and good taste.”

DoeMatterStreetsTasteHarmonyStealingGentlemanHatsCheatCoatsBananasGood TasteTop HatsNever Cheat
Book:Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
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