Quote

Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration.

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
Way
Gods
Echo
Laughter
Faint
Blind
Hideous
Caverns
Filled
Hollow
Terrestrial
Outside
Echoes
Milky
Sweet
Humour
Fruitless
Beyond
Aspiration
Squat
Thing
Mad
Pathos

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In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.
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No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
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Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate the eternal in the ephemeral the past in the present the infinite in the finite these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound - and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard subside and allow him to hear certain other fainter noises which he suspected were lurking behind them.
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Zoologists seem to consider the cerebration of cats and dogs about 50-50 -- but my respect always goes to the cool, sure, impersonal, delicately poised feline who minds his business and never slobbers.
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In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call happiness, if we be but able to entertain them.
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The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
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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!
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Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit.
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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.
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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.
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There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.
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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.
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We must recognise the essential underlaying savagery in the animal called man, and return to older and sounder principles of national life and defense. We must realise that man's nature will remain the same so long as he remains man that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake.
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Two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness.
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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.
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I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.
H. P. Lovecraft