The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown H. P. Lovecraft More Quotes by H. P. Lovecraft More Quotes From H. P. Lovecraft The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age. H. P. Lovecraft ignorance positive knowledge No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. H. P. Lovecraft torture horror terrible I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. H. P. Lovecraft chaos night world As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, [and] steel their emotions against decent human sympathy. H. P. Lovecraft idlers lucky eye I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time. H. P. Lovecraft dream trying thinking Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. H. P. Lovecraft cities dream men I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. H. P. Lovecraft madness shadow world Our brains deliberately make us forget things, to prevent insanity H. P. Lovecraft brain forget insanity Some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze andstone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horsesalong the edges of thick forests, and then we know that we have looked backthrough the ivory gates into that world of wonder that was ours, before we were wise and unhappy. H. P. Lovecraft hero wise dream That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die. H. P. Lovecraft strange may lying 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. H. P. Lovecraft ignorant reality thinking All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. H. P. Lovecraft differences real dream I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. H. P. Lovecraft flags real enthusiasm If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end! H. P. Lovecraft god inspirational life Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. H. P. Lovecraft dancing drinking life We love kitties, gawd bless their little whiskers, and we don't give a damn whether they or we are superior or inferior! They're confounded pretty, and that's all we know and all we need to know! H. P. Lovecraft littles giving needs 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. H. P. Lovecraft trying life religion The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. H. P. Lovecraft serene unseen space The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. H. P. Lovecraft ignorance islands thinking Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty. H. P. Lovecraft delight spring past
