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1f9c76c
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Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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a967022
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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. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species--if separate species we be--for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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403bf18
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It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.
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sphinx
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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e9b85d5
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Wise men told him his simple fancies were inane and childish, and even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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c713d84
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I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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4574e7e
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Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me - to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken. And ye..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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d039b70
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A dog is a pitiful thing, depending wholly on companionship, and utterly lost except in packs or by the side of his master. Leave him alone and he does not know what to do except bark and howl and trot about till sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep. A cat, however, is never without the potentialities of contentment. Like a superior man, he knows how to be alone and happy. Once he looks about and finds no one to amuse him, he settles down t..
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cats
dog
dogs
kitten
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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e8f1b30
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Ritengo che la cosa piu misericordiosa al mondo sia l'incapacita della mente umana di mettere in correlazione tutti i suoi contenuti. Viviamo su una placida isola di ignoranza nel mezzo del nero mare dell'infinito, e non era destino che navigassimo lontano. Le scienze, ciascuna tesa nella propria direzione, ci hanno finora nuociuto ben poco; ma, un giorno, la connessione di conoscenze disgiunte aprira visioni talmente terrificanti della rea..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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c22e9b1
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But the ship swept on, and the dusk hushed the hum of the day, and the first stars above blinked answers to the early fireflies on the banks as that jungle fell far behind, leaving only its fragrance as a memory that it had been.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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db02ace
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Certainly, the terror of a deserted house swells in geometrical rather than arithmetical progression as houses multiply to form a city of stark desolation. The sight of such endless avenues of fishy-eyed vacancy and death, and the thought of such linked infinities of black, brooding compartments given over to cob-webs and memories and the conqueror worm, start up vestigial fears and aversions that not even the stoutest philosophy can disper..
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spooky
terror
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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f9c8cf5
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On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including a strikingly vivid mirage - the first I had ever seen - in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.
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imagery
mirage
vision
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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186375d
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The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind. It is no accident that the contemplative Egyptians, together with such later poetic spirits as Poe, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne, were all sincere worshippers of the supple grimalkin.
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cats-vs-dogs
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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1786922
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The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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ae3723c
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The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.
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cats-vs-dogs
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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c201179
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Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.
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science-fiction
weird
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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9020b8b
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It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. ... The Thing cannot be described--there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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a984bc7
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Shreiking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one another through endless, ensanguinated condors of purple fulgurous sky... formless phantasms and kalaidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous over-nourished oaks with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of p..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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ade29aa
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It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always excites aversion, distrust, and fear.
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cold
fear
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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31fc4f5
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Well did the traveler know those garden lands that lie betwixt the wood of the Cerenerian Sea, and blithely did he follow the singing river Oukranos that marked his course. The sun rose higher over gentle slopes of grove and lawn, and heightened the colors of the thousand flowers that starred each knoll and dangle. A blessed haze lies upon all this region, wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than other places hold, and a little mo..
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fantasy
lovecraft
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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555e7e7
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I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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d064e33
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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 pos..
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fantasy
fiction
lovecraft
weird-fiction
wonder
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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f8fdbbf
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Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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397896c
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The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to tappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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2479a00
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In that shrieking the inmost soul of human fear and agony clawed hopelessly and insanely at the ebony gates of oblivion.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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f2cfcde
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My searchlight expired, but still I ran. I heard voices, and yowls, and echoes, but above all there gently rose that impious, insidious scurrying, gently rising, rising as a stiff bloated corpse gently rises above an oily river that flows under endless onyx bridges to a black putrid sea. Something bumped into me - something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the livi..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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74132e3
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It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone;
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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be70e73
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I had evoked - and the book was indeed all I had suspected.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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b488a3a
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One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may have been sardonic. She had changed - as those who take to the water change - and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a spot her dead son had learned about, and had leaped to ..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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05502fd
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The cat . . . is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe.
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cats-vs-dogs
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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2e35dd4
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If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set first to his clothing one night.
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horror
humanity
suicide
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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d3241fb
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He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases led down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that led through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other worlds, and in different space-time continua.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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faec2b3
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I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fu..
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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09dd495
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Would to Heaven we had never approached them at all, but had run back at top speed out of that blasphemous tunnel with the greasily smooth floors and the degenerate murals aping and mocking the things they had superseded-run back, before we had seen what we did see, and before our minds were burned with something which will never let us breathe easily again!
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horror
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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1527e5e
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Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity.
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hideous
hideousness
horror
terror
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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f38cac6
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Damn it, it wasn't quite fresh enough!
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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6d86769
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Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Prime emphasis should be given to subtle suggestion - imperceptible hints and touches of selective associative detail which express shadings of mood and build up a vague illusion of the strange re..
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fiction
subtlety
weird-fiction
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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c737fa9
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the geometry of the place was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal,
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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0fdc447
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It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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aa6d6eb
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The blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence of the minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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62bab94
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A mountain walked or stumbled.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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967edae
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Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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cd8cb15
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It was the eldritch scurrying of those fiend-born rats, always questing for new horrors, and determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth's centre where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly in the darkness to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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02567ed
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With hidden powers of unknown extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town.
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H.P. Lovecraft |
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0cb40f0
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It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental ..
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H.P. Lovecraft |