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! H. P. Lovecraft More Quotes by H. P. Lovecraft More Quotes From H. P. Lovecraft The phenomenon of dreaming ... helped to build up the notion of an unreal or spiritual world; and in general, all the conditions of savage dawn-life so strongly conduced toward a feeling of the supernatural, that we need not wonder at the thoroughness with which man's very hereditary essence has become saturated with religion and superstition. H. P. Lovecraft spiritual dream men To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred? H. P. Lovecraft massachusetts mystery lonely The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim. H. P. Lovecraft wings attitude profound And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. H. P. Lovecraft nightmare scream hours Every limited mind demands a certain freedom of expression, and the man who cannot express himself satisfactorily without the stimulation derived from the spirited mode of two centuries ago should certainly be permitted to follow without undue restraint a practice so harmless, so free from essential error, and so sanctioned by precedent, as that of employing in his poetical compositions the smooth and inoffensive allowable rhyme. H. P. Lovecraft errors expression men I could not help feeling that they were evil things -- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. H. P. Lovecraft mountain evil feelings With hidden powers of unknown extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town. H. P. Lovecraft towns men My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. H. P. Lovecraft sight writing art 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. H. P. Lovecraft race laughing men One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses them and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror - for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them. H. P. Lovecraft real race writing Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience--but when one unmistakably isn't such an artist, there's no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is. H. P. Lovecraft pretending phases artist So far as English versification is concerned, Pope was the world, and all the world was Pope. H. P. Lovecraft pope concerned world Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead. H. P. Lovecraft tolerance giving ideas My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. H. P. Lovecraft vary opinion whole 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. H. P. Lovecraft spheres source reason Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit. H. P. Lovecraft training limits men Religion as a vital issue is dead except on paper, and whatever beauty-baiting the future may witness will be the work of greed and trade, and not of honest cosmos-facing. H. P. Lovecraft cosmos issues greed No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood. H. P. Lovecraft reform analysis lonely I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing--it is all a matter of harmony and good taste. H. P. Lovecraft coats gentleman doe 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. H. P. Lovecraft atheism wish mind
