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The unknown ... became for our primitive forefathers a terrible and omnipotent source of boons and calamities visited upon mankind for cryptic and wholly extra-terrestrial reasons, and thus clearly belonging to spheres of existence whereof we know nothing and wherein we have no part.

H. P. Lovecraft

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H. P. Lovecraft
Age: 46 †
Born: 1890
Born: August 20
Died: 1937
Died: March 15
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Providence
Rhode Island
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft
Ward Phillips
HP Lovecraft
Richard Raleigh
Edgar Softly
Augustus T. Swift
Lewis Theobald
Jr.
Albert Frederick Willie
Humphrey Littlewit
Reason
Thus
Wholly
Calamities
Nothing
Became
Spheres
Boon
Mankind
Extra
Forefathers
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Omnipotent
Terrible
Primitive
Wherein
Existence
Unknown
Visited
Whereof
Upon
Clearly
Calamity
Cryptic
Part
Reasons
Belonging
Terrestrial

More quotes by H. P. Lovecraft

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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
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Someday our piecing together of knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas we shall either go mad or flee into the safety of a new dark age.
H. P. Lovecraft
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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
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Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.
H. P. Lovecraft
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There were nameless horrors abroad and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought tp stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.
H. P. Lovecraft
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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.
H. P. Lovecraft
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There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear.
H. P. Lovecraft
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In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance's of theism's truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.
H. P. Lovecraft
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That's because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear - the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.
H. P. Lovecraft
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It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I am Providence, and Providence is myself - together, indissolubly as one, we stand thro' the ages a fixt monument set aeternally in the shadow of Durfee's ice-clad peak!
H. P. Lovecraft
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To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.
H. P. Lovecraft
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Truly, there are terrible primal arcana of earth which had better be left unknown and unevoked dread secrets which have nothing to do with man, and which man may learn only in exchange for peace and sanity cryptic truths which make the knower evermore an alien among his kind, and cause him to walk alone on earth.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I do not regard the rise of woman as a bad sign. Rather do I fancy that her traditional subordination was itself an artificial and undesirable condition based on Oriental influences. Our virile Teutonic ancestors did not think their wives unworthy to follow them into battle, or scorn to dream of winged Valkyries bearing them to Valhalla.
H. P. Lovecraft
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I have looked upon all the universe has to hold of horror,and even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.
H. P. Lovecraft
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But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
H. P. Lovecraft
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incurable lover of the grotesque
H. P. Lovecraft