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.
H. P. LOVECRAFTI 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.
More H. P. Lovecraft Quotes
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Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species – if separate species we be – for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
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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.
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I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.
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I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.
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I could not write about ‘ordinary people’ because I am not in the least interested in them.
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One cannot be too careful in the selection of adjectives for descriptions. Words or compounds which describe precisely, and which convey exactly the right suggestions to the mind of the reader, are essential.
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But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.
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Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.
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In writing a weird story, I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere and place the emphasis where it belongs.
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Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature-defying illusions.
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From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.
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Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
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In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence, I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.
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To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.
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Adulthood is hell.
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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.
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I am not very proud of being an human being; in fact, I distinctly dislike the species in many ways. I can readily conceive of beings vastly superior in every respect.
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Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races and is crystallised in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings.
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We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
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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!
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It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day’s end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may.
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One superlatively important effect of wide reading is the enlargement of vocabulary which always accompanies it.
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The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
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The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
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It would not be amiss for the novice to write the last paragraph of his story first, once a synopsis of the plot has been carefully prepared – as it always should be.
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The earliest English attempts at rhyming probably included words whose agreement is so slight that it deserves the name of mere ‘assonance’ rather than that of actual rhyme.
H. P. LOVECRAFT