30 HP Lovecraft Quotes That Are Astonishing Enough To Drive You Mad

HP Lovecraft is an author who is known for his horror fiction. He was an American author who has written books like The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth. He was the centre of the author circle ‘Lovecraft circle’ where they wrote stories and shared them with each other.

Although he was virtually unknown as an author before he was exclusively published in the pulp magazine after a few years of which he died at the age of 47 but if asked today, he is one of the most well-known weird fiction writers. Below mentioned are 30 HP Lovecraft quotes, which might make you forget most of the recent readings you have done:

1. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

This HP Lovecraft quote about death simply suggests that some things are so beautiful that even death cannot destroy them

2. The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

In this quote, the author is trying to mention that fear is one of the oldest and most felt emotions but we do not fear from what we know and instead are feared more of what we do not know aka the unknown.

3. The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.

In this quote about the world, HP Lovecraft says that the world may or may not be considered as a comic but whatever the jokes are in the book it is all on mankind.

4. The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

By this HP Lovecraft quote, we understand that our ability to link our racing thoughts to one another is kind-of the only thing that is the most forgivable about the human race.

5. From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

This is one of the quotes about the world, which represents the horror of life and mentions that usually they lack irony which is overall present (or maybe not).

6. Almost nobody dances sober unless they happen to be insane.

If read carefully, this can be considered as a happy quote but if you are a the-glass-is-half-empty person then this can be a sad representation of life in one line.

7. Ocean is more ancient than the mountains and freighted with the memories and the dreams of time.

This HP Lovecraft quotes simply suggest that although the ocean is older but no matter what it is still terrified of the past.

8. I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.

One thing which I can assure from this quote is that our author was all-in on creatives and suggests us to do the same.

9. Never explain anything.

Pretty self-explanatory quote. Isn’t it?

10. I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.

This is kind of all of us, don’t you think? Whenever we are doing pleasure work we don’t think and just keep doing whereas when we actually have to work we end up with a block or a kind of stoppage.

11. 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.

In this quote, it’s clear that the author does not believe in himself and he pretty much does not care about any of that

12. Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabric have dull spots.

This HP Lovecraft quotes can be considered as a metaphor where the brain of a person is compared to a fabric and the author is simply trying to say that even the most creative person can maybe lack in one or the other field.

13. Pleasure to me is wonder - the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutility.

If interpreted in one way the author is saying that he has neither experienced nor he will ever be able to do since pleasure is something which lurks in shadows

14. It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all.

In this quote, he is kind-of clarifying his hatred for life and my only advice to you would be not to follow this quote.

15. I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.

This HP Lovecraft quotes represent his love for the books he owned or had or even loved and by now it might be pretty much clear to you as well that he might not be in favor of his life but his books and literature are kinds of his whole world.

16. Religion is still useful among the herd - that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is ineradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be. Take away his Christian god and saints, and he will worship something else.

HP Lovecraft, in this quote, is trying to represent the religious and the superstitious side of humans and he says that if we take away anything from us and then we will come with an alternative

17. 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.

This quote about the world specifies how cold we are to each other and moreover to ourselves and we were not meant to make it this far

18. To the scientist, there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

In this quote, HP Lovecraft is trying to say that most of the time the truth is merely the truth and instead is an unfortunate side or part of the truth.

19. I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

The author feels that he does not belong where he is and he thinks that he is amongst strangers, those who are very different from him.

20. Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and stumbles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement. And just as inferior people prefer the inferior animal which scampers excitedly because someone else wants something, so do superior people respect the superior animal which lives its own life and knows that the puerile stick-throwings of alien bipeds are none of its business and beneath its notice. The dog barks and begs and tumbles to amuse you when you crack the whip. That pleases a meekness-loving peasant who relishes a stimulus to his self-importance. The cat, on the other hand, charms you into playing for its benefit when it wishes to be amused; making you rush about the room with a paper on a string when it feels like exercise, but refusing all your attempts to make it play when it is not in the humour. That is personality and individuality and self-respect -- the calm mastery of a being whose life is it's own and not yours -- and the superior person recognises and appreciates this because he too is a free soul whose position is assured, and whose only law is his own heritage and aesthetic sense.

This quote is a comparison between a dog and a cat. The author thinks that dogs and cats are way too different but yet are similar and can be compared to humans in matters of superior and inferior people

21. To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.

Although we notice that a lot of times HP Lovecraft tells us how he did not like the world around him but for a change in this one he suggests that we enjoy life while we can

22. I have seen the dark universe yawning, Where the black planets roll without aim, Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge, or lustre, or name.

This quote about the world is a representation of a few dark things in the form of space, sky, planets, etc.

23. At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

This one is dedicated to the writers and especially to the ones who think they write better at night when everyone is asleep.

24. Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.

In this one, he says that we might think that he doesn’t care about anything but instead, he says that he believes in almost everything and does not trust anything like the cosmos.

25. 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 learn 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. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.

In this HP Lovecraft quote, he is trying to tell us that it is not necessary that we can not be happy and grown-ups at the same time instead of just growing up and thinking about the days and becoming wise yet unhappy

26. Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.

We all know that we don’t like revisiting bad memories of our past. That is pretty much all that is said in this quote.

27. If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

This quote is about the anger of a human. How that anger can start and end whatever comes in its way is actually what the author is trying to warn us from!

28. We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.

The point of this quote is that we should not follow anything blindly. Not our religion, not our communities, nothing because if we do it would land at the end of who knows what.

29. The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.

This quote about death displays the interest that the author has gained to find out everything he can about death and what would happen after it

30. It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.

Like most of the others, this quote also has more than one interpretation but yet it is quite different. The author here tries to say that do not make the mistake to enjoy horrors that can bring something dark in your or anyone else’s life.

By now, you might have figured why is HP Lovecraft known to write weird horror fiction. These are enough quotes that you might need to be scared or overwhelmed with.

I surely don’t know about you but one thing or rather one message which I received clearly and loudly was that no matter what life has its own essential value which can not be gained again if once lost, so make the most of it.

I really hope this article makes you understand it too.

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