Quotes About Exploration

Nothing is so intimately a part of a man as his library. It contains just what the possessor wants to look at most often, and comes to form his window or gateway to the larger cosmos.

we are all roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages.

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

Was tempted to quote Walden—"Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"—but refrained. How can I get lonely, I asked, when there's still so much to read?

If not dissuaded, they will get to the innermost nucleus of the antarctic and melt and bore till they bring up that which may end the world we know. So I must break through all reticences at last - even about that ultimate nameless thing beyond the mountains of madness.

There will always be a small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.

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!

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.

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

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.

resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the dark

resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the

Our apprehensions were over what we might find, or fail to find, at the end of our journey; for silence continued to answer all calls despatched to the camp.

My ears rang and my imagination seethed as I led my camel slowly across the sand to that unvocal place; that place which I alone of living men had seen. In

I bade my host adieu and took a train for San Francisco. In less than a month I was in Dunedin;

Looking desultorily about, his attention had been drawn by a dull glimmering on one of the tables; and he had extricated the queer orblike stone from its shadowy, crowded position between an ugly little Aztec idol, the fossil egg of a dinornis, and an obscene fetish of black wood from the Niger.

Existen repliegues en el tiempo y en el espacio, en la fantasía y en la realidad, que sólo un soñador puede adivinar...

when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty, and poets sang no more save of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who travelled out of life on a quest into the spaces whither the world's dreams had fled.

mountains of madness

there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.

S. Latitude 34° 21?, W. Longitude 152° 17?

It is man's relation to the cosmos—to the unknown—which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination. . . . —H. P. LOVECRAFT2

there are strange objects in the great abyss, and the seeker of dreams must take care not to stir up or meet the wrong ones.

Wir leben auf einer friedlichen Insel der Ahnungslosigkeit inmitten schwarzer Meere der Unendlichkeit, und es war nicht vorgesehen, dass wir diese Gewässer weit befahren sollen.