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

H. P. Lovecraft

I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Demand Enthusiasm Fear Myself Work
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Childhood Fear Happiness Memories Sadness
But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Dreams Fake Poet 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
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
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
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Cosmic Joke Kind Man World
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Appearance Chronicle Ingredient Race Terrorism
Orthodox Christianity, by playing upon the emotions of man, is able to accomplish wonders toward keeping him in order and relieving his mind. It can frighten or cajole him away from evil more effectively than could reason.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Accomplishment Emotional Mindset Play Relieve
That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Aristotle Establishment Poetry Principle Pronounce
I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Furniture Library Live Possession Sleep
Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Atmosphere Greatness Human Mood
I am disillusioned enough to know that no man’s opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he’s talking about.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Enough Genuine Illusion Known Man Myself Opinion
Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Choice Expression Feeling Group People Religious Sanity Strong Togetherness
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.
H. P. LOVECRAFT

Care Description Essential Mindset Reading Selection
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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