H. P. Lovecraft Quotes
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What, in substance, both the Esquimaux wizards and the Louisiana swamp-priests had chanted to their kindred idols was something very like this: the word-divisions being guessed at from traditional breaks in the phrase as chanted aloud: 'Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.' … 'In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.' .
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There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.
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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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The writing accompanying this oddity was, aside from a stack of press cuttings, in Professor Angell's most recent hand; and made no pretense to literary style. What seemed to be the main document was headed 'CTHULHU CULT' in characters painstakingly printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of.
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No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.
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Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.
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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.
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Denied anything ardently desired, the individual or state will argue and parley just so long - then, if the impelling motive be sufficiently great, will cast aside every rule and break down every acquired inhibition, plunging viciously after the object wished; all the more fantastically savage because of previous repression.
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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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A dog is a pitiful thing, depending wholly on companionship, and utterly lost except in packs or by the side of his master. Leave him alone, and he does not know what to do except bark and howl and trot about till sheer exhaustion forces him to sleep.
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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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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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Barzai knew so much of the gods that he could tell of their comings and goings, and guessed so many of their secrets that he was deemed half a god himself.
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There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.
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Horror and the unknown or the strange are always closely connected so that it is hard to create a convincing picture of shattered natural law or cosmic alienage or 'outsideness' without laying stress on the emotion of fear.
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Nothing is really typical of my efforts... I'm simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements of time, the unknown, cause and effect, fear, scenic and architectural beauty, and other seemingly ill-assorted things) which persist in clamouring for expression.
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When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.
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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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Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.
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Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
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Indeed, there is much in pure humanitarian culture, as opposed to rigid scientific training, which encourages absorption in the affairs of mankind, and more or less indifference to the unfathomed abysses of star-strown space that yawn interminably about this terrestrial grain of dust.
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It is no compliment to be the stupidly idolised master of a dog whose instinct it is to idolise, but it is a very distinct tribute to be chosen as the friend and confidant of a philosophic cat who is wholly his own master and could easily choose another companion if he found such an one more agreeable and interesting.
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Children, old crones, peasants, and dogs ramble; cats and philosophers stick to their point.
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I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.