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
“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.”
Source: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
Last update Oct. 1, 2023.
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H.P. Lovecraft 203
American author 1890–1937Related quotes
H.P. Lovecraft
(1890–1937) American author
Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Context: 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 infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but 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.
“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”
Source: Gift from the Sea
Russell Jacoby
(1945) American historian
Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), pp. 3-4
“We are islands, but never too far
We are islands, and I need your light tonight…”
Mike Oldfield
(1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist
Song lyrics, Islands (1987)
William Morris
(1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land
Context: It happened once, some men of Italy
Midst the Greek Islands went a sea-roving,
And much good fortune had they on the sea:
Of many a man they had the ransoming,
And many a chain they gat and goodly thing;
And midst their voyage to an isle they came,
Whereof my story keepeth not the name.