18 quotes
book by S. T. Joshi
“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
"Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way."
on Fear
"I shall never be very merry or very sad, for I am more prone to analyse than to feel."
on Emotion
"In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!"
on Truth
"We are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages."
on Life
"I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams."
on Dreams
"The cat . . . is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe."
on Philosophy
"If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!"
"It’s hard to have done all one’s growing up since 33 — but that’s a damn sight better than not growing up at all."
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,And with strange aeons even death may die."
on Death
"Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed."
on Wisdom
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear."
"No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of ide"
"Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time."
on Nature
"The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the least concrete and describable."
"There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range."
"From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent."
"It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all."