H.P. Lovecraft: Trending quotes (page 10)

Source: The Outsider

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 53
Non-Fiction
Context: The opinions of the masses are of no interest to me, for praise can truly gratify only when it comes from a mind sharing the author's perspective. 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. I could not write about "ordinary people" because I am not in the least interested in them. Without interest there can be no art. Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos—to the unknown—which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination. The humanocentric pose is impossible to me, for I cannot acquire the primitive myopia which magnifies the earth and ignores the background. 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. Like the late Mr. Wilde, "I live in terror of not being misunderstood."

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Context: There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.
These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape — for did not this star-fashioned image prove it? — but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die...

Fiction, The Shunned House (1924)
Source: Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

Source: The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature: Revised and Enlarged

Source: The Rats in the Walls

Source: The Temple

Source: Nemesis

"Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927)
Non-Fiction
Variant: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
Source: The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

"Herbert West: Re-Animator" in "Home Brew" Vol. 1, No. 1 (February 1922)
Fiction

Variant: 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.
Source: The Call of Cthulhu

Source: The Thing on the Doorstep