H. P. LOVECRAFT QUOTES

American author (1890-1937)

H. P. Lovecraft quote

Mid-summer ... when the alchemy of Nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odours of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness.

H. P. Lovecraft

"The Tomb"

Tags: summer


Religion itself is an absurdity and an anomaly, and paganism is acceptable only because it represents that purely orgiastic phase of religion farthest from reality.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft


That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Call of Cthulhu"

Tags: death


I am perfectly confident that I could never adequately convey to any other human being the precise reasons why I continue to refrain from suicide--the reasons, that is, why I still find existence enough of a compensation to atone for its dominantly burthensome quality.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

letter to August Derleth, December 25, 1930

Tags: suicide


Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Hypnos"

Tags: dreams


It is good to be a cynic -- it is better to be a contented cat -- and it is best not to exist at all.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Nietzscheism and Realism"

Tags: cynicism


In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Ex Oblivione"

Tags: dreams


I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

letter to Woodburn Harris, February/March 1929

Tags: dreams


The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind--yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

letter to Natalie H. Wooley, May 2, 1936

Tags: religion


The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Other Gods"

Tags: moon


The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Pickman's Model"

Tags: present


You see them? You see the things that float and flop about you and through you ever moment of your life? You see the creatures that form what men call the pure air and the blue sky? Have I not succeeded in breaking down the barrier; have I not shown you worlds that no other living men have seen?

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"From Beyond"


Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"From Beyond", The Fantasy Fan, June 1934

Tags: perception


The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

Supernatural Horror in Literature

Tags: fear


All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

letter to Robert E. Howard, August 16, 1932

Tags: atheism


As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, [and] steel their emotions against decent human sympathy.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

letter to C. L. Moore, August 1936

Tags: republicans


Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Herbert West: Re-Animator"

Tags: memory


If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Temple"

Tags: madness


Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

attributed, Telling It Like It Is

Tags: dance


To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

Selected Letters