H.P. Lovecraft Quotes

I have seen the dark universe yawning Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.

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.

To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence.

Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises.

incurable lover of the grotesque

That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.

Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.

Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.

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

Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you.

In London there is a man who screams when the church bells ring.

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.

All I want is to know things. The black gulph of the infinite is before me.

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

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.

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

The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them.

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.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.

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

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

Heaven knows where I'll end up - but it's a safe bet that I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.

There now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror; incidents which I tremble to recall and dare not seek to interpret.

It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.

When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams.

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.

There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.

There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

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

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

In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!

Nyarlathotep . . . the crawling chaos . . . I am the last . . . I will tell the audient void. . . .

I have looked upon all the universe has to hold of horror,and even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.

There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything.

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.

It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes.

Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos--to the unknown--which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination.

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.

I could not help feeling that they were evil things -- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.

It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.

Through all this horror my cat stalked unperturbed. Once I saw him monstrously perched atop a mountain of bones, and wondered at the secrets that might lie behind his yellow eyes.

I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.

Vigorous let us be in attaining our ends, and mild in our method of attainment.