Queer haow a cravin' gits a holt on ye -- As ye love the Almighty, young man, don't tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn't raise nor buy -- here, set still, what's ailin' ye? ...
"The Picture in the House"
These folk say that on a table in a bare room on the ground floor are many peculiar bottles, in each a small piece of lead suspended pendulum-wise from a string. And they say that the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that whenever he speaks to a bottle the little lead pendulum within makes certain definite vibrations as if in answer. Those who have watched the tall, lean, Terrible Old Man in these peculiar conversations, do not watch him again.
"The Terrible Old Man"
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.
"Nyarlathotep"
I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes.
"Nyarlathotep"
"That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die."
Quoting the Necronomicon, in "The Nameless City"
Wherefore do ye toil; is it not that ye may live and be happy? And if ye toil only that ye may toil more, when shall happiness find you? Ye toil to live, but is not life made of beauty and song? ... Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end. Were not death more pleasing?
"The Quest of Iranon"
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
"The Outsider"
Despite my most careful searches and investigations, I have never since been able to find the Rue d'Auseil. But I am not wholly sorry; either for this or for the loss in undreamable abysses of the closely written sheets which alone could have explained the music of Erich Zann.
"The Music of Erich Zann"
Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.
"Herbert West -- Re-Animator"
I could not but feel that some noxious marine mind had declared a war of extermination upon all the solid ground, perhaps abetted by the angry sky.
"The Crawling Chaos"
And when the smoke cleared away, and I sought to look upon the earth, I beheld against the background of cold, humorous stars only the dying sun and the pale mournful planets searching for their sister.
"The Crawling Chaos"
When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep.
"Ex Oblivione"
... for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
"Ex Oblivione"
It is uncommon to fire all six shots of a revolver with great suddenness when one would probably be sufficient, but many things in the life of Herbert West were uncommon.
"Herbert West--Reanimator"
It is natural that such a thing as a dead man's scream should give horror, for it is obviously not a pleasing or ordinary occurrence; but I was used to similar experiences, hence suffered on this occasion only because of a particular circumstance.
"Herbert West--Reanimator"
... West had emerged with a soul calloused and seared, and a hardened eye which sometimes glanced with a kind of hideous and calculating appraisal at men of especially sensitive brain and especially vigorous physique. Toward the last I became acutely afraid of West, for he began to look at me that way.
"Herbert West--Reanimator"
Their outlines were human, semi-human, fractionally human, and not human at all -- the horde was grotesquely heterogeneous.
"Herbert West--Reanimator"
They imply that I am either a madman or a murderer -- probably I am mad. But I might not be mad if those accursed tomb-legions had not been so silent.
"Herbert West--Reanimator"
Men of learning suspect it little, and ignore it mostly.
"Hypnos"
Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments -- inarticulateness.
"Hypnos"
There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, and wood-wind, on which St. John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodaemoniacal ghastliness ...
"The Hound"
We were no vulgar ghouls, but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and moonlight. These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression, and we gave their details a fastidious technical care.
"The Hound"
Alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know, but we recognized it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred...
The first mention of the Necronomicon, in "The Hound"
As we hastened from that abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in St. John's pocket, we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled, as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So, too, as we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we heard the faint distant baying of some gigantic hound in the background. But the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we could not be sure.
"The Hound"
History had led me to this archaic grave. History, indeed, was all I had after everything else ended in mocking Satanism.
"The Lurking Fear"
Besides, he added, my constant talk about "unnamable" and "unmentionable" things was a very puerile device, quite in keeping with my lowly standing as an author.
"The Unnamable"
We know things, he said, only through our five senses or our religious intuitions; wherefore it is quite impossible to refer to any object or spectacle which cannot be clearly depicted by the solid definitions of fact or the correct doctrines of theology -- preferably those of the Congregationalists, with whatever modifications tradition and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may supply.
"The Unnamable"
The witchcraft terror is a horrible ray of light on what was stewing in men's crushed brains, but even that is a trifle. There was no beauty; no freedom -- we can see that from the architectural and household remains, and the poisonous sermons of the cramped divines. And inside that rusted iron strait-jacket lurked gibbering hideousness, perversion, and diabolism. Here, truly, was the apotheosis of the unnamable.
"The Unnamable"
I was far from home, and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me.
"The Festival"
It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.
"The Festival"