Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird fiction and horror fiction, who is known for his creation of what became the Cthulhu Mythos. Profoundly inspirational H. P. Lovecraft quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
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Famous H. P. Lovecraft Quotes
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. H. P. Lovecraft
Ultimate horror often paralyzes memory in a merciful way.
Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions. H. P. Lovecraft
From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind. H. P. Lovecraft
Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.
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! H. P. Lovecraft
No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace
Memories and possibilities are even more hideous than realities. H. P. Lovecraft
It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that is seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilized cynic to do other than to worship it. H. P. Lovecraft
The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. H. P. Lovecraft
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. H. P. Lovecraft
Fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and the one which best lends itself to the creation of nature defying illusions.
If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. H. P. Lovecraft
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.
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
There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range.
I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams. H. P. Lovecraft
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.
The ignorant and the deluded are, I think, in a strange way to be envied. That which is not known of does not trouble us, while an imagined but insubstantial peril does not harm us. To know the truths behind reality is a far greater burden. H. P. Lovecraft
Almost nobody dances sober unless they happen to be insane.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents, some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age. H. P. Lovecraft
If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!
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
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. H. P. Lovecraft
It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.
It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests. H. P. Lovecraft
Pleasure to me is wonder the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.
I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. H. P. Lovecraft
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
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 favor, 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
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!
I like coffee exceedingly. H. P. Lovecraft
I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.
We love kitties, gawd bless their little whiskers, and we don’t give a damn whether they or we are superior or inferior! They’re pretty, and that’s all we know and all we need to know! H. P. Lovecraft
I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. H. P. Lovecraft
I am not very proud of being a human being; in fact, I distinctly dislike the species in many ways. I can readily conceive of beings vastly superior in every respect.
For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming. H. P. Lovecraft
Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.
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.
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.
In writing a weird story, I always try very carefully to achieve the right mood and atmosphere and place the emphasis where it belongs.
Cats are the runes of beauty, invincibility, wonder, pride, freedom, coldness, self sufficiency, and dainty individuality the qualities of sensitive, enlightened, mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate, reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, civilized, master class men.
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.
It is good to be a cynic it is better to be a contented cat and it is best not to exist at all.
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.
The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilized cynic to do other than worship it.
Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder, I try to weave an air of awe and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.
It is no compliment to be the stupidly idolized master of a dog whose instinct it is to idolize, 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 a one more agreeable and interesting.
That meter 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.
