H. P. Lovecraft Zitate – Sprüche auf Englisch mit Übersetzung

Zitat des Tages von H. P. Lovecraft:

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.

I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous - that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't.

H. P. Lovecraft

Throw a stick, and the servile dog wheezes and pants and shambles to bring it to you. Do the same before a cat, and he will eye you with coolly polite and somewhat bored amusement.

H. P. Lovecraft

One can never produce anything as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about.

H. P. Lovecraft

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.

H. P. Lovecraft

To me, there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form - and local human passions and conditions and standards - are depicted as native to other worlds and universes.

H. P. Lovecraft

Imagination is a very potent thing, and in the uneducated often usurps the place of genuine experience.

H. P. Lovecraft

That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.

H. P. Lovecraft

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.

H. P. Lovecraft

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!

H. P. Lovecraft

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street.

H. P. Lovecraft

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

H. P. Lovecraft

The cat is such a perfect symbol of beauty and superiority that it seems scarcely possible for any true aesthete and civilised cynic to do other than worship it.

H. P. Lovecraft

The cat is classic whilst the dog is Gothic - nowhere in the animal world can we discover such really Hellenic perfection of form, with anatomy adapted to function, as in the felidae.

H. P. Lovecraft

Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training, it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit.

H. P. Lovecraft

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

H. P. Lovecraft

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.

H. P. Lovecraft

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

H. P. Lovecraft

Write out the story - rapidly, fluently, and not too critically - following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design.

H. P. Lovecraft

Orthodox Christianity, by playing upon the emotions of man, is able to accomplish wonders toward keeping him in order and relieving his mind. It can frighten or cajole him away from evil more effectively than could reason.

H. P. Lovecraft

It would not be amiss for the novice to write the last paragraph of his story first, once a synopsis of the plot has been carefully prepared - as it always should be.

H. P. Lovecraft

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

H. P. Lovecraft

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.

H. P. Lovecraft

We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.

H. P. Lovecraft

The real lover of cats is one who demands a clearer adjustment to the universe than ordinary household platitudes provide; one who refuses to swallow the sentimental notion that all good people love dogs, children, and horses while all bad people dislike and are disliked by such.

H. P. Lovecraft

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

H. P. Lovecraft

The 'punch' of a truly weird tale is simply some violation or transcending of fixed cosmic law - an imaginative escape from palling reality - hence, phenomena rather than persons are the logical 'heroes.'

H. P. Lovecraft

One cannot be too careful in the selection of adjectives for descriptions. Words or compounds which describe precisely, and which convey exactly the right suggestions to the mind of the reader, are essential.

H. P. Lovecraft

Plots may be simple or complex, but suspense, and climactic progress from one incident to another, are essential. Every incident in a fictional work should have some bearing on the climax or denouement, and any denouement which is not the inevitable result of the preceding incidents is awkward and unliterary.

H. P. Lovecraft

An excellent habit to cultivate is the analytical study of the King James Bible. For simple yet rich and forceful English, this masterly production is hard to equal; and even though its Saxon vocabulary and poetic rhythm be unsuited to general composition, it is an invaluable model for writers on quaint or imaginative themes.

H. P. Lovecraft

Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.

H. P. Lovecraft

All of my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large.

H. P. Lovecraft

The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.

H. P. Lovecraft

Indeed, there is much in pure humanitarian culture, as opposed to rigid scientific training, which encourages absorption in the affairs of mankind, and more or less indifference to the unfathomed abysses of star-strown space that yawn interminably about this terrestrial grain of dust.

H. P. Lovecraft

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

H. P. Lovecraft

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.

H. P. Lovecraft

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

H. P. Lovecraft