Quotes from H. P. Lovecraft

Life is a hideous thing.

Of our relation to all creation we can never know anything whatsoever. All is immensity and chaos. But, since all this knowledge of our limitations cannot possibly be of any value to us, it is better to ignore it in our daily conduct of life.

I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous - that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't.

Truth is of no practical value to mankind save as it affects terrestrial phenomena, hence the discoveries of science should be concealed or glossed over wherever they conflict with orthodoxy.

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

The real lover of cats is one who demands a clearer adjustment to the universe than ordinary household platitudes provide; one who refuses to swallow the sentimental notion that all good people love dogs, children, and horses while all bad people dislike and are disliked by such.

The cat is classic whilst the dog is Gothic - nowhere in the animal world can we discover such really Hellenic perfection of form, with anatomy adapted to function, as in the felidae.

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.

The man or nation of high culture may acknowledge to great lengths the restraints imposed by conventions and honour, but beyond a certain point, primitive will or desire cannot be curbed.

That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

It is only the forcible propagation of conventional Christianity that makes the agnostic so bitter toward the church. He knows that all the doctrines cannot possibly be true, but he would view them with toleration if he were asked merely to let them alone for the benefit of the masses whom they can help and succour.

It is no compliment to be the stupidly idolised master of a dog whose instinct it is to idolise, but it is a very distinct tribute to be chosen as the friend and confidant of a philosophic cat who is wholly his own master and could easily choose another companion if he found such an one more agreeable and interesting.

One superlatively important effect of wide reading is the enlargement of vocabulary which always accompanies it.

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; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.

One can never produce anything as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about.

The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.

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