Hp Lovecraft Cthulhu Quotes

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulu waits dreaming

I have looked upon all the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.

Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.

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

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.

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!

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 deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.

the geometry of the place was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal,

In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

The Thing cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.

Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species - if separate species we be - for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loossed upon the world.

On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including a strikingly vivid mirage - the first I had ever seen - in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.

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

The more he withdrew from the world about him, the more wonderful became his dreams; and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper.

God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad,

Her laughter was like sweet deadly venom.

It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness. … The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order.

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.

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 more he withdrew from the world around him, the more wonderful became his dreams.

Non è morto ciò che può vivere in eterno, E in strani eoni anche la morte può morire.

A mountain walked or stumbled.

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.

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 deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

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,

Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises heard by Legrasse’s men as they ploughed on through the black morass toward the red glare and the muffled tom-toms. 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.

Ritengo che la cosa più misericordiosa al mondo sia l'incapacità della mente umana di mettere in correlazione tutti i suoi contenuti. Viviamo su una placida isola di ignoranza nel mezzo del nero mare dell'infinito, e non era destino che navigassimo lontano. Le scienze, ciascuna tesa nella propria direzione, ci hanno finora nuociuto ben poco; ma, un giorno, la connessione di conoscenze disgiunte aprirà visioni talmente terrificanti della realtà, e della nostra spaventosa posizione in essa che, o diventeremo pazzi per la rivelazione, o fuggiremo dalla luce mortale nella pace e nella sicurezza di un nuovo Medioevo".

I made it last night in a dream of strange cities;

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

Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died.

Мисля, че една от най-големите милости, които ни се оказват в този свят, е невъзможността на човешкият ум да осъзнае своята нищожност.

I think Professor Angell died because he knew too much, or because he was likely to learn too much. Whether I shall go as he did remains to be seen, for I have learned much now.

One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.

seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters.

He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong—and hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: “Cthulhu fhtagn”, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

the myths were of a well-known pattern common to most  of mankind and determined by early phases of imaginative experience which always produced the same type of delusion.

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

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?

we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.

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

It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A

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

They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R'lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.

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.

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 deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

These little debates are known as “flamewars.

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

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

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent creature so near me with an infinite intensity.

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

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

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

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

thirst had driven him into the desert again,

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea.

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

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!

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

Tartarus.

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.

A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

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.

Scrivo in uno stato di tensione insostenibile. Fra poco sarà l'alba e, allora, io non esisterò più. Privo d'ogni mezzo, privo della droga che — sola — mi ha consentito fino ad oggi di sopravvivere ai miei incubi, non mi rimane altro modo per sottrarmi al tormento: mi getterò dall'alta finestra di questa soffitta, nella squallida strada sottostante.

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)

Some day the piercing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our terrifying position therein, that we shall either go bad from the revelation or flee from the deadly age into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

I s’pose you know—though I can see you’re a Westerner by your talk—what a lot our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with ’em. You’ve probably heard about the Salem man that came home with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know there’s still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod.

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.“ – HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

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.

The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

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.

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.

They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him.

Il a dû être piégé par le naufrage alors qu'il se trouvait dans sa noire citadelle, sinon, à l'heure qu'il est, le monde entier hurlerait de terreur. Qui peut prévoir la fin ? Ce qui a surgi peut disparaître, et ce qui a sombré peut surgir à nouveau. L'abjection attend son heure en rêvant au fond de la mer, et la mort plane sur les cités chancelantes des hommes. Un jour viendra - mais non, je ne dois ni ne puis y penser !

I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons—the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.

Die größte Gnade auf dieser Welt ist, so scheint es mir, das Nichtvermögen des menschlichen Geistes, all ihre inneren Geschehnisse miteinander in Verbindung zu bringen. Wir leben auf einem friedlichen Eiland des Ungewissens inmitten schwarzer Meere der Unendlichkeit, und es ist uns nicht bestimmt, diese weit zu bereisen. Die Wissenschaften - deren jede in eine eigene Richtung zielt - haben uns bis jetzt wenig gekümmert; aber eines Tages wird das Zusammenfügen der einzelnen Erkenntnisse so erschreckende Aspekte der Wirklichkeit eröffnen, dass wir durch diese Enthüllung entweder dem Wahnsinn verfallen oder uns aus dem tödlichen Licht in den Frieden und die Sicherheit eines neuen, dunklen Zeitalters fliehen werden.

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 deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." The Call Of Cthulhu, incipit.

March 1st—our February 28th according to the International Date Line—the earthquake and storm had come. From Dunedin the Alert and her noisome crew had darted eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned, and on the other side of the earth poets and artists had begun to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor had moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu. March 23d the crew of the Emma landed on an unknown island and left six men dead; and on that date the dreams of sensitive men assumed a heightened vividness and darkened with dread of a giant monster’s malign pursuit, whilst an architect had gone mad and a sculptor had lapsed suddenly into delirium! And what of this storm of April 2nd—the date on which all dreams of the dank city ceased, and Wilcox emerged unharmed from the bondage of strange fever? What of all this—and of those hints of old Castro about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams? Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man’s power to bear? If so, they must be horrors of the mind alone, for in some way the second of April had put a stop to whatever monstrous menace had begun its siege of mankind’s soul.

Tampoco hay que creer que el hombre es el más antiguo o el último de los amos de la tierra, o que esa combinación de vida y sustancia discurre sola por el universo. Los Grandes Antiguos eran, los Grandes Antiguos son, y los Grandes Antiguos serán. No conocemos nada del espacio sino por intermedio de ellos. Caminan serenos y primordiales, sin dimensiones e invisibles para nosotros. Yog-Sothoth es la puerta. Yog-Sothoth es la llave y el guardián de la puerta. Pasado, presente y futuro, todo es uno en Yog-Sothoth. Él sabe por dónde entraron los Grandes Antiguos en el pasado,y por dónde volverán a irrumpir otra vez. Sabe dónde Ellos han hollado los campos de la Tierra, dónde los siguen hollando, y por qué nadie puede contemplarlos mientras lo hacen. A veces el hombre puede saber que están cerca por Su olor, pero ningún hombre puede conocer Su semblante, salvo en los rasgos de los hombres engendrados por Ellos,y los hay de muchos tipos, distinguiéndose en apariencia de la auténtica forma humana hasta la forma sin imagen ni sustancia que es la de Ellos. Caminan invisibles y hediondos en lugares solitarios donde las Palabras han sido pronunciadas y los Ritos han sido aullados en las Estaciones apropiadas. El viento gime con Sus voces, y la tierra murmura con Su voluntad. Abaten los bosques y destruyen ciudades, aunque ningún bosque o ciudad advierte la mano que los aniquila. Kadath, en el páramo helado los ha conocido; pero, ¿qué hombre conoce a Kadath? El desierto helado del Sur y las islas sumergidas del océano conservan piedras donde puede verse Su sello, pero ¿quién ha visto la helada ciudad hundida o la torre sellada engalanada con algas y percebes? El Gran Cthulhu es Su primo, aunque apenas puede entreverlos débilmente.¡Iä! ¡Shub-Niggurath! Por su olor inmundo Los conoceréis. Su mano está en vuestras gargantas, aunque no Los veáis, y Su morada se encuentra en el umbral que custodiáis. Yog-Sothoth es la llave que abre la puerta, el lugar donde se reúnen las esferas. ahora el hombre reina donde Ellos reinaron antes; pronto Ellos reinarán donde el hombre reina ahora. Después del verano viene el invierno; después del invierno, el verano. Ellos esperan pacientes y poderosos, porque volverán a reinar aquí.