Quotes from H. P. Lovecraft

I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living.

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 conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism.

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!

That Crawford Tilinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair, if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed.

Aprendí que no existe nada tan terrible y peligroso como la gente normal.

where purl with ravishing music the scented waters that come from the grotto-born river Narg.

This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space - a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.

And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient peaked garret, leaving me in savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of that night-baying viol behind me.

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. A time will come-but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.

Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Think not that delight and understanding dwell just across the Karthian hills, or in any spot thou canst find in a day's, or a year's, or a lustrum's journey.

Ciertos toques aquí y allá eran vagos indicios de símbolos y estímulos latentes que, si hubiésemos tenido otro trasfondo mental y emocional y un sistema sensorial totalmente diferente, habrían tenido un profundo significado para nosotros.

For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten. - The Cats of Ulthar, HP Lovecraft

Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres?

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of disassociated 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 deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Mankind was not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few.

La emoción más antigua y más intensa de la humanidad es el miedo, y el más antiguo y más intenso de los miedos es el miedo a lo desconocido

Las negras lápidas surgían de la nieve como las uñas destrozadas de un cadáver gigantesco.

That is not dead, which can eternaly lie, and with strange eons, even death may die.

You shall have the old home still [adverb, not noun - although Jack was by no means out of sympathy with Stubbs' kind of farm produce].

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

Sometimes, when it is cloudy, I can sleep.

Man is so used to thinking visually that I almost forgot the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of wood and glass in its low-studded monotony as though I saw it.

Original title Al Azif—azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos'd to be the howling of daemons.