“Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore.”
Source: The Complete Fiction Collection vol III
“The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods.”
Source: THE DREAMLANDS SERIES: 20+ Gruesome Tales of Terror in One Premium Edition: The Dream Cycle: Beyond the Wall of Sleep, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, From Beyond, The Nameless City, Ex Oblivione, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Polaris, Hypnosäó_
“Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a fear all the greater because I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated)
“I am distinctly opposed to visibly arrogant and arbitrary extremes of government--but this is simply because I wish the safety of an artistic and intellectual civilisation to be secure, not because I have any sympathy with the coarse-grained herd who would menace the civilisation if not placated by sops.”
Source: Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
“The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.”
“I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide - the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality.”
“As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence.”
“The glorious Dryden, refiner and purifier of English verse, did less for rhyme than he did for metre.”
Source: The Conservative
“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated)
“Religion struck me so vague a thing at best, that I could perceive no advantage of any one system over any other.”
“No one ever wrote a story yet without some real emotional drive behind it--and I have not that drive except where violations of the natural order ... defiances and evasions of time, space, and cosmic law ... are concerned.”
Source: Selected Letters 1934-1937
“Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you.”
Source: THE DREAMLANDS SERIES: 20+ Gruesome Tales of Terror in One Premium Edition: The Dream Cycle: Beyond the Wall of Sleep, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dreams in the Witch House, From Beyond, The Nameless City, Ex Oblivione, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Polaris, Hypnosäó_
“My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. In broad daylight, and at most seasons I am apt to think the greater part of it a mere dream; but sometimes in the autumn, about two in the morning when winds and animals howl dismally, there comes from inconceivable depths below a damnable suggestions of rhythmical throbbing ... and I feel that the transition of Juan Romero was a terrible one indeed.”
Source: 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_
“When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.”
Source: 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_
“I am only about half alive - a large part of my strength is consumed in sitting up or walking. My nervous system is a shattered wreck, and I am absolutely bored & listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me. However - so many things do interest me, & interest me intensely, in science, history, philosophy, & literature; that I have never actually desired to die, or entertained any suicidal designs, as might be expected of one with so little kinship to the ordinary features of life.”
“It's not a bad idea to call this Cthulhuism & Yog-Sothothery of mine "The Mythology of Hastur" - although it was really from Machen & Dunsany & others, rather than through the Bierce-Chambers line, that I picked up my gradually developing hash of theogony - or daimonogony. Come to think of it, I guess I sling this stuff more as Chambers does than as Machen & Dunsany do - though I had written a good deal of it before I ever suspected that Chambers ever wrote a weird story!”
“I am Providence, and Providence is myself - together, indissolubly as one, we stand thro' the ages; a fixt monument set aeternally in the shadow of Durfee's ice-clad peak!”
“It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which give us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is - since nothing means anything in itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something.”
“It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world - we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death - the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.”
“What I used to respect was not really aristocracy, but a set of personal qualities which aristocracy then developed better than any other system . . . a set of qualities, however, whose merit lay only in a psychology of non-calculative, non-competitive disinterestedness, truthfulness, courage, and generosity fostered by good education, minimum economic stress, and assumed position, AND JUST AS ACHIEVABLE THROUGH SOCIALISM AS THROUGH ARISTOCRACY.”
“I can look back . . . at two distinct periods of opinion whose foundations I have successively come to distrust - a period before 1919 or so, when the weight of classic authority unduly influenced me, and another period from 1919 to about 1925, when I placed too high a value on the elements of revolt, florid colour, and emotional extravagance or intensity.”
“In its flawless grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively considered, and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the wonder and fascination of the unknown.”
Source: Cat Tales 2: Fantastic Feline Fiction
“It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day's end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may. Personally I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born, yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate.”
“I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.”
“In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance's of theism's truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.”
Source: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
“The cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see.”
Source: THE WEIRD TALES of H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shunned House, The Outsider, Pickmanäó»s Model, The Picture in the House, The Templeäó_: The Greatest Tales of Horror & Macabre: The Cats of Ulthar, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Colour Out of Space, The Horror at Red Hook, The Strange High House in the Mist, From Beyond, Dagonäó_
“Man is an essentially superstitious and fearful animal. Take away the herd's Christian gods and saints and they will without failing come to worship...something else.”
“Our brains deliberately make us forget things, to prevent insanity”
“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth.”
Source: 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_
“There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought tp stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.”
“Nyarlathotep . . . the crawling chaos . . . I am the last . . . I will tell the audient void. . . .”
Source: H. P. Lovecraft Fiction Collection
“Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.”
Source: H. P. Lovecraft: Tales
“The ignorant and the deluded are, I think, in a strange way to be envied. That which is not known of does not trouble us, while an imagined but insubstantial peril does not harm us. To know the truths behind reality is a far greater burden.”
“In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!”
Source: 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_
“While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.”
Source: H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)
“And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.”
Source: H. P. Lovecraft Fiction Collection
“With hidden powers of unknown extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town.”
“The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'. Only egotism exists.”
“It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.”
“Someday our piecing together of knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas we shall either go mad or flee into the safety of a new dark age.”
“Maybe, just maybe, I should not have used the word "eldritch" so many times now that I think about it.”
“Life is a hideous thing.”
Source: Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family
“That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.”
Source: H. P. Lovecraft Complete Collection
“Vigorous let us be in attaining our ends, and mild in our method of attainment.”
“If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.”
Source: Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
“I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about.”
“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”
Source: The Conservative
“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!”
“I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”
“Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.”
Source: Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
