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H. P. Lovecraft Quotes

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H.P. Lovecraft was an American horror fiction writer known for his unique cosmic horror style and Gothic narrative. His works often explore the insignificance of humans in the face of the unknown and omnipotent forces, profoundly influencing horror literature in the second half of the 20th century.

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All Men World Knows Dream Horror Humans May Ifs Thinking Mind Real Mankind Writing Space Behinds Black Ends Form Strange Cosmos

Famous H. P. Lovecraft Quotes

“Race prejudice is a gift of nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.”

Age Race Mankind Prejudice Various Preserves Purity Division

Book:The Conservative

Source: The Conservative

“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.”

“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.”

Knows Reason Existence Mankind Source Terrible Extras Belonging Spheres Primitive Calamity Forefathers Omnipotent Boon Cryptic

Book:The Classic Horror Stories

Source: The Classic Horror Stories

“All great humorists are sad... I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest - the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

World Helping Seeing Mankind Humour Jokes Bases Comic Humorists Jest Pitiful Tinsel

Author:H. P. Lovecraft

“It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients - or their lack - and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws.”

Real Reason Law Evil Mankind Particular Locals Remembered Good And Evil Cosmic

Author:H. P. Lovecraft

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

World Mankind Jokes Comic

Book:The Conservative

Source: The Conservative

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”

Source: Complete Collection Of H. P. Lovecraft - 150 eBooks With 100+ Audiobooks (Complete Collection Of Lovecraft's Fiction, Juvenilia, Poems, Essays And Collaborations)

“Religion is still useful among the herd - that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is in-eradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be. Take away his Christian god and saints, and he will worship something else.”

Should Humans Stills Reason Helping Christian Animal Mankind Worship Saint Reason Why Herds Crude Orderly Superstitious Organized Religion Human Animal Christian God

Author:H. P. Lovecraft

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”

Source: H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)

“I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.”

World Universe Interest Deals Mankind Couple Horror Pages Murder Tired Beastly

Author:H. P. Lovecraft

“Now all my tales are based on the fundemental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.... To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.”

Source: The Classic Horror Stories

“It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.”

Earth Left Black Dark Sleep Mankind Safety Depth Corners Nightmare Conquest Surviving Left Alone Abnormality

Author:H. P. Lovecraft