Quotes from H.P. Lovecraft

For those who relish speculation regarding the future, the tale of supernatural horror provides an interesting field.

Atal felt a spectral change in the air, as if the laws of earth were bowing to greater laws.

there are some experiences and intimations which scar too deeply to permit of healing, and leave only such an added sensitiveness that memory reinspires all the original horror.

Il a dû être piégé par le naufrage alors qu'il se trouvait dans sa noire citadelle, sinon, à l'heure qu'il est, le monde entier hurlerait de terreur. Qui peut prévoir la fin ? Ce qui a surgi peut disparaître, et ce qui a sombré peut surgir à nouveau. L'abjection attend son heure en rêvant au fond de la mer, et la mort plane sur les cités chancelantes des hommes. Un jour viendra - mais non, je ne dois ni ne puis y penser !

From a private hospital for the insane near Providence, Rhode Island, there recently disappeared an exceedingly singular person.

Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that kept certain people in touch with each other's houses, and the burying ground, and the sea?

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

They were large, even for the mus decumanus, which sometimes measures fifteen inches in length

It had been so long abandoned that the rats scurrying on their errands spared me no more than occasional glances of annoyance.

Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquility!

you could see one near Henchman Street from the elevated last year.

As to what the things were—explanations naturally varied. The common name applied to them was "those ones," or "the old ones," though other terms had a local and transient use. Perhaps the bulk of the Puritan settlers set them down bluntly as familiars of the devil, and made them a basis of awed theological speculation.

At a guess I'll guarantee to lead you to thirty or forty alleys and networks of alleys north of Prince Street that aren't suspected by ten living beings outside of the foreigners that swarm them.

All they ever did was clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of night-gaunts.

thirst had driven him into the desert again

It isn't so very far from the elevated as distance goes, but it's centuries away as the soul goes.

The priest was dead. Nevertheless, he sat at table with us as we feasted on cold meats.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." Only

Certainly, we were in one of the strangest, weirdest, and most terrible of all the corners of earth's globe.

We can take the shuttle at the South Station for Battery Street, and after that the walk isn't much.

Despite his Falstaffian appearance he was a hard and ruthless man. His piggish eyes were filled with greed; his fleshy mouth was lustful; his only natural smile was one of avarice.

It was dismal sitting there on rickety boxes in the pitchy darkness, but we smoked pipes and occasionally flashed our pocket lamps about.

changed to the elevated at the South Station, and at about twelve o'clock had climbed down the steps at Battery Street and struck along the old waterfront past Constitution Wharf. I didn't keep track of the cross streets, and can't tell you yet which it was we turned up, but I know it wasn't Greenough Lane.

Copp's Hill Burying Ground, which could not be many blocks away from this very house, was a favourite scene.