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But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

H. P. Lovecraft

Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Education Experience Genuine Imagination Potential
All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading, and the learner must never cease to hold this phase uppermost. In many cases, the usage of good authors will be found a more effective guide than any amount of precept.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Beginning Goodness Guide Learning Literature
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Animal Cat Classic Dog Hell World
If I could create an ideal world, it would be an England with the fire of the Elizabethans, the correct taste of the Georgians, and the refinement and pure ideals of the Victorians.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Creation Ideal Myself Taste World
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Cat Children Dog Lover Oneself Ordinary People Reality
We should perceive that man’s period of historical existence, a period so short that his physical constitution has not been altered in the slightest degree, is insufficient to allow of any considerable mental change.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Change Condition History Man Mental Physical
Horrors, I believe, should be original – the use of common myths and legends being a weakening influence.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Believe Common Influence Legend Weakness
I could not write about ‘ordinary people’ because I am not in the least interested in them.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Interest Myself People Writing
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Cosmic Joke Kind Man World
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Appearance Capacity Degree Demand Imagination Life Reading
The ‘punch’ of a truly weird tale is simply some violation or transcending of fixed cosmic law – an imaginative escape from palling reality – hence, phenomena rather than persons are the logical ‘heroes.’
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Escape Phenomena Reality Story Tale Transcendence Weird
It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Horror Mistake Silence Solitude
I am well-nigh resolv’d to write no more tales but merely to dream when I have a mind to, not stopping to do anything so vulgar as to set down the dream for a boarish Publick.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Dreams Mindset Myself Writing
No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Course Fiction Formal Story Writing
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Black Ignorance Live Ourselves Travel
To me, there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form – and local human passions and conditions and standards – are depicted as native to other worlds and universes.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Human Passion Standard Universe World

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

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But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

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