H.P. Lovecraft quotes

Born
August 20, 1890, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.

Died
March 15, 1937.

Occupation
Writer.

H.P. Lovecraft was an American writer.

The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
– H.P. Lovecraft

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

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.
– H.P. Lovecraft

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
– H.P. Lovecraft

All of my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large.
– H.P. Lovecraft

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

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.
– H.P. Lovecraft

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.
– H.P. Lovecraft

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

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

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

The most merciful thing in the world… is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
– H.P. Lovecraft

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
– H.P. Lovecraft

Our brains deliberately make us forget things, to prevent insanity.
– H.P. Lovecraft

Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
– H.P. Lovecraft

It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
– H.P. Lovecraft

Heaven knows where I’ll end up – but it’s a safe bet that I’ll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.
– H.P. Lovecraft

I do not think that any realism is beautiful.
– H.P. Lovecraft

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
– H.P. Lovecraft

The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.
– H.P. Lovecraft

One superlatively important effect of wide reading is the enlargement of vocabulary which always accompanies it.
– H.P. Lovecraft