Cthulhu Mythos Quotes

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.

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

[August] Derleth tried to prevent any other (non-Derleth-approved) writer from writing Cthulhu Mythos stories.If Lovecraft had wanted bad writers to avoid Cthulhu Mythos stories, he wouldn’t have written back to August Derleth.

Her laughter was like sweet deadly venom.

There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other.

The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

When you can hear a spider walk across the floor, you know it’s time to keep your socks on. Thank God for insecticide.

Wave after wave of cats poured down from the hill as if a vent into a world of cats had been opened,

If magic violates the fundamental laws of nature, they clearly weren't all that fundamental.

All the birds had flown away, save only the great, grotesque penguins.

Even the littlest minds, sunk in petty pride of self, are susceptible to chords struck on the cosmic scale.

Was tempted to quote Walden—“Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?”—but refrained. How can I get lonely, I asked, when there’s still so much to read?

It is absurd to say that mathematicians have not discovered the fourth dimension.

the rats inevitably dragged away the whole cadaver through the hole they gnawed in the coffin.

Chronophagos, the Devourer of Time, the Eater of Hours. What man remembereth even the hour of his death if the Chronophagos hath devoured it? —Nicephoros Attaliades, The Testament of Nightmares

Reasonable readers would have accepted my book about ghouls as a work of fiction, but such readers are rare, and most condemned it as a hoax. Even worse, totally unreasonable readers took it for a scientific treatise.

Ihre Hand ist an eurer Kehle, doch seht ihr Sie nicht.

On monoliths did ancients carve their warnings To those who use night's forces lest they bring A doom upon themselves that when, in mourning They be the mourned...

Despite his Falstaffian appearance he was a hard and ruthless man. His piggish eyes were filled with greed; his fleshy mouth was lustful; his only natural smile was one of avarice.

that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

The priest was dead. Nevertheless, he sat at table with us as we feasted on cold meats.

The square-paned windows were coated with a thick, dewlike moisture;

Ulrich the Axe, famed for his bloody deeds among Christians and pagans alike.

Then came upon an incredible essay by Lafcadio Hearn, something entitled “Gaki,” detailing the curious Japanese belief that insects are really demons or the ghosts of evil men.

Again there was silence—a silence as of consummated Evil brooding above its unnamable triumph.

Still, it’s a nice, cynical book for those who like atrocity scenes—starving prisoners forced to eat their girlfriends, etc.

this very morning, an hour agone, he has mounted his white ass for the return journey to Vyones.

thirst had driven him into the desert again,

But did it ever occur to you, my friend, that force and matter are merely the barriers to perception imposed by time and space?

You cannot oppose what you cannot see or feel. You cannot oppose the thousand-dimensional. Suppose they should eat their way to us through space!

You drug me, and then ask me to walk! Frank, you’re as unreasonable as an artist.

These little debates are known as “flamewars.

I don’t believe that there is any fourth dimension, and I emphatically do not believe in Tao.

I bade my host adieu and took a train for San Francisco. In less than a month I was in Dunedin;

Ye have done much to bring about the indescribable return. May ye go mad quickly and not be devoured.

They were large, even for the mus decumanus, which sometimes measures fifteen inches in length,

Masson disliked and respected the ferocious little rodents, for he knew the danger that lurked in their flashing, needle-sharp fangs;

My youngest boy went mad. He sits drooling on the porch, trying to play the cat like an accordion. He’s been scratched some.

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

What nonsense! What arrogance! What blind, ignorant balderdash!

It had been so long abandoned that the rats scurrying on their errands spared me no more than occasional glances of annoyance.

I said, “I try to open my mail at least once a year, but sometimes I neglect it.

Sie verachteten die Welt, als hätten sie Zugang zu anderen und vorzüglicheren Daseinssphären.

This man bore no resemblance to the bearded, grizzled Akeley of the snapshot; but was a younger and more urban person, fashionably dressed, and wearing only a small, dark moustache.

Then the germ of panic seemed to spread among the seekers. It was one thing to chase the nameless entity, but quite another to find it. Spells might be all right—but suppose they weren’t?

Es wäre ihnen ein Leichtes, die Erde zu erobern, sie haben es aber bislang nicht versucht, weil dazu keine Notwendigkeit bestand. Sie lassen die Dinge lieber so, wie sie sind, und ersparen sich die Scherereien.

Free of all responsibility or restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a mediaeval monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty.

we had allowed ourselves to become distracted on the way to the Crusade, never laid eyes on a Turk, turned to pillage and rapine among the Hungarians and Greeks in order to reach the East…all for the glory of God, of course, until defeated,

several of our company told of ghosts, one, how a man had been slain on the way to the wars, but had not known it, his ghost going on, thinking himself alive, performing deeds of great valor, even returning home in triumph where he bought lands, begot sons, and lived in contentment for many years before discovering one day, by chance, that he was already dead.

Whitman Press will publish three children’s textbooks, based on your creed, for which you’ll deliver manuscripts and artwork. The three books are: 1. Dagon and Jill 2. The Shadow Over Humpty Dumpty 3. A Children’s Necronomicon (with pop-up section)

By the Ram with a Thousand Ewes! By the Tail of Dagon and the Horns of Derceto!” said Azédarac, as he fingered the tiny, pot-bellied vial of vermilion liquid on the table before him. “Something will have to be done with this pestilential Brother Ambrose.

Looking desultorily about, his attention had been drawn by a dull glimmering on one of the tables; and he had extricated the queer orblike stone from its shadowy, crowded position between an ugly little Aztec idol, the fossil egg of a dinornis, and an obscene fetish of black wood from the Niger.

rude cross lay flat upon the barren earth and on it was bound a man—half-naked, wild of aspect with his corded limbs, glaring eyes and shock of tangled hair. His executioners were Roman soldiers, and with heavy hammers they prepared to pin the victim’s hands and feet to the wood with iron spikes.

At the present time he was a man of perhaps forty-five years of age, short and heavy-set, with a bullet-shaped head that rested on broad, ape-like shoulders. His thick torso and bulging paunch were supported by a pair of spindly legs that contrasted oddly with the upper portions of his beefy body.

It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

As to what the things were—explanations naturally varied. The common name applied to them was “those ones,” or “the old ones,” though other terms had a local and transient use. Perhaps the bulk of the Puritan settlers set them down bluntly as familiars of the devil, and made them a basis of awed theological speculation.

Nahum did not send her to the county asylum, but let her wander about the house as long as she was harmless to herself and others. Even when her expression changed he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic.

So talked a while with Sarr about his cats—the usual subject of conversation, especially because, now that summer’s coming, they’re bringing in dead things every night. Field mice, moles, shrews, birds, even a little garter snake. They don’t eat them, just lay them out on the porch for the Poroths to see—sort of an offering, I guess.

I read odd books and entertained odd ideas (however furtively), largely ignored by my family; and at that age I was looking hard for someone to follow, a mentor of any sort, who would take me under his wing and recognize my special talents (assuming that I had any) and tell me the secret of how everything worked, so I could avoid pain. And there you were.

Nyarlathotep ... das kriechende Chaos ... Ich bin der letzte ... Ich werde es der lauschenden Leere verkünden ...

Wir leben auf einer friedlichen Insel der Ahnungslosigkeit inmitten schwarzer Meere der Unendlichkeit, und es war nicht vorgesehen, dass wir diese Gewässer weit befahren sollen.

...und der ganze Erdball würde durch eine Fackel aus Ekstase und Freiheit in Flammen gesetzt.

Vorsicht ist die erste Sorge jener, die gelegentliche Scharlatanerie und Betrug gewöhnt sind.

In seinem Verhalten schien eine kryptische, sardonische Arroganz zu lauern, als ödeten ihn alle menschlichen Wesen nur noch an.

Befragt die Geringeren, auf daß nicht die Größeren Euch antworten und mehr heraufbeschwören, als Ihr vermöget

Nichtsdestotrotz habet Ihr starke Hände, ein Messer und eine Pistole, und es ist nicht schwer, ein Grab zu schaufeln.

Der Wind rauscht mit Ihren Stimmen, und die Erde grollt durch Ihren Geist.

So erweckte er eher den Eindruck harmloser Unbeholfenheit, als attraktiv zu wirken.

Udolpho—too

its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before.

jedenfalls hörte ich Donnerschläge und andere Geräusche, welche die Natur nur im Zorne von sich gibt.

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

Shadows of spent time vibrated against intoxicating prisms of potential futures.

Eine Stimme aus anderen Zeiten gehört in einen Friedhof anderer Zeiten.

sie hieß mich mit einer Warmherzigkeit willkommen, die geradezu hämisch war.

Es schien mir recht bedauerlich, dass Derby sich gerade für sie interessierte, sagte aber nichts dazu, da Vernarrtheit an Widerstand bloß gedeiht.

We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

There are things beyond the veil of human understanding, strange, antediluvian monstrosities that stalk the shadows, preying on dark, lost minds, waiting at the rim of the Great Abyss to claim their own.

Stars are aligning. Must quickly say the Black Mass and make the Voorish Sign. My youngest boy went mad. He sits drooling on the porch, trying to play the cat like an accordion. He’s been scratched some. Yer Servant, Ezra Whateley

denn dann sei die Menschheit wie die Großen Alten geworden; frei und ungezähmt und jenseits von Gut und Böse, und jedes Gesetz und jede Moral sei zur Seite gefegt, und alle Menschen würden schreien und töten und sich in Lust ergehen.

When my avocation became my vocation I was set free. Writing, at first, was a hobby that I loved dearly. It turned into a serious endeavor several years ago when I started writing screenplays. Unfortunately selling one out of every ten was not very lucrative. Success comes in many forms and my poor returns from screenplays matured my writing style, ultimately affording me the ability to author hundreds of magazine articles that generated a decent paycheck. Fast forward to today and I have published my first novel “The Alchemist’s Notebook.” It is a whirlwind story in the style of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos that takes the reader from Vietnam to Innsmouth then Arkham and eventually to Europe wherein chaos and screaming terror awaits all living creatures on our planet. I pledge to keep the reader on pins and needles hoping that sanity and normalcy will return. “The Alchemist’s Notebook” and all future novels along with my blogs will deal exclusively with that genre.

Auf einem der letzten und zerfallensten Reliefs fiel uns ein watschelndes, primitives Säugetier besonders ins Auge, das von den Landbewohnern teils als Schlachtvieh, teils als lustiger Spaßmacher gehalten wurde – seine affenartigen und menschlichen Ansätze waren nicht zu übersehen.

I think that nothing is ’just’ fiction, as jokes are never ’just’ jokes and entertainment is never ’just’ entertainment. That’s not to say they can’t be entertaining or ridiculous, but all of them also address more serious topics in ways that might not be possible through ’serious’ communication.

Denn dieser Ort konnte keine gewöhnliche Stadt sein – er musste den ursprünglichen Kern und Mittelpunkt irgendeines urzeitlichen und unfassbaren Kapitels der Erdgeschichte gebildet haben, der nur in den dunkelsten und verzerrtesten Mythen vagen Widerhall findet und vom Chaos der Erdwehen verschlungen wurde, lange bevor irgendeine uns bekannte Menschenrasse aus dem Affenstadium herauswatschelte

The bottom of the sea was aflame with a vast bloody glow that spread beneath the schooner; the light slid under the keel and illuminated the sails and rigging from below. It was as though we were on a boat in the Drury Lane Theatre, lighted by an invisible row of flares. ‘Phosphorescence?’ I ventured. ‘Look,’ whispered Jellewyn. The water had become as transparent as glass. At an enormous depth, we saw great dark masses with unreal shapes: there were manors with immense towers, gigantic domes, horribly straight streets lined with frenzied houses. We appeared to be flying over a furiously busy city at an incredible height. ‘There seems to be movement,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ We could see a swarming crowd of amorphous beings engaged in some sort of feverish and infernal activity. ‘Get back!’ Jellewyn shouted, pulling me violently by the belt. One of those beings was rising toward us with astounding speed. In less than a second its immense bulk had hidden the undersea city from us; it was as though a flood of ink had instantaneously spread around us. The keel received a tremendous blow. In the crimson light, we saw three enormous tentacles, three times as high as the mainmast, hideously writhing in the air. A formidable face composed of black shadows and two eyes of liquid amber rose above the port side of the ship and gave us a terrifying look.

And I succumbed to an ecstatic horror at this insight.

The vast marble dome of the State House stood out in massive silhouette, its crowning statue haloed fantastically by a break in one of the tinted stratus clouds that barred the flaming sky. When

Who knows what wonders, what horrors, may have transpired in the dim past, before our race stood erect? Who can guess at the mysteries of the future, when we and all our works are passed away and the sun itself grows old? The

i tasted stars dissolved in brine, fizzy and distant and salt —my fingers prickled with pins and my skin was lashed with tongues of flame my eyes were topaz I could taste the night

weaving his way across

Once more I ventured within those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet,

Some are waiting for the day when their exhausted bodies will give out and their wispy souls will detach and allegedly drift off to heaven.

could hear the wind blowing and light shining

Iä!  Iä! The Goat of a Thousand Young! Ghatanothoa! Great Tulu! Byakhee!

The hands of time must have marched ever onwards,

an eerie blue hue that shone like a contagious disease.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” Then

The signals stretched out of sight ahead, like a python with scales of red and green, their radiance haloed in a light fog that was drifting in off the Bay. And people were out, little knots of them near the corners. They formed isolated clots of gaudy life, like tidepools, all of them dressed in baggy clothes of bright-colored nylon, paneled and logo-ed with surreal pastels under the emerald-and-ruby signal glare. And as they stood and talked together, they moved in a way both fitful and languid, like sealife bannering in a restless sea.

The bright languid people on the corners threw laughter at them now, a shout or two, and it seemed as if the whole great submarine python stirred to quicker currents. Ricky felt a ripple of hallucination and saw here, for just a moment, a vast inked mural, the ink not dry, themselves and all around them still half-liquid entities billowing in an aqueous universe …

The skies are haunted by that which it were madness to know; and strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies. Unnamable things have come to us in alien horror and will come again. And the evil of the stars is not as the evil of earth.