H. P. Lovecraft Quotes - Page 4

The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.

Uncertainty and danger are always closely allied, thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.

In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call "happiness", if we be but able to entertain them.

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.

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

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.

Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.

Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.

The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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.

I could not write about "ordinary people" because I am not in the least interested in them.

The sea can bind us to her many moods, whispering to us by the subtle token of a shadow or a gleam upon the waves, and hinting in these ways of her mournfulness or rejoicing. Always she is remembering old things, and these memories, though we may not grasp them, are imparted to us, so that we share her gaiety or remorse.

Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal

Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.

It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all.

I am a student of life, and don't want to miss any experience. There's poetry in this sort of thing, you know--or perhaps you don't know, but it's all the same.

I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla.

Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.

There is no field other than the weird in which I have any aptitude or inclination for fictional composition. Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.

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.