History Quotes / HPLOvecraft

-->-- '''H.P. Lovecraft''', "The Defence Remains Open!" 1921

->''"Lovecraft became a perfect barometer… of the fears of the early 20th Century, including the fears of man’s relegation in importance, given what we were starting to understand about the cosmos. Lovecraft was unlike other people of his day. He actually understood that stuff. He was very quick – he didn’t like Einstein – but he was very quick to assimilate Einstein’s ideas. He didn’t like quantum theory, but he almost understood it."''

->''"As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."''
-->-- '''H.P. Lovecraft''', who changed / mellowed many of his political and social views later in life, and ended up supporting FDR for president.

->''"It would be inaccurate to describe Howard Phillips Lovecraft as a man with issues. It's more like he was a bundle of issues shambling around in a roughly bipedal approximation of a man. Chronically depressed, hypersensitive to criticism, almost certainly agoraphobic, prone to horrible nightmares and nervous breakdowns, and thoroughly racist even by the standards of the time, it'd be easy to come to the conclusion that H.P. Lovecraft was simply afraid of everything. But this isn't true either. He was just afraid of everything that was his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island."''

->"It would be inaccurate to describe Howard Phillips Lovecraft as a man with issues. It's more like he was a bundle of issues shambling around in a roughly bipedal approximation of a man. Chronically depressed, hypersensitive to criticism, almost certainly agoraphobic, prone to horrible nightmares and nervous breakdowns, and thoroughly racist even by the standards of the time, it'd be easy to come to the conclusion that H.P. Lovecraft was simply afraid of everything. But this isn't true either. He was just afraid of everything that was his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island."

->''"The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman."''
-->-- '''Lovecraft on cats.'''

-->-- '''From a filk of Gilbert and Sullivan's''' ''[[http://www.journalfen.net/community/the_hms_stfu/239597.html "Climbing over Rocky Mountain"]]'' '''by Adam Cuerden'''

-?''"Lovecraft became a perfect barometer… of the fears of the early 20th Century, including the fears of man’s relegation in importance, given what we were starting to understand about the cosmos. Lovecraft was unlike other people of his day. He actually understood that stuff. He was very quick – he didn’t like Einstein – but he was very quick to assimilate Einstein’s ideas. He didn’t like quantum theory, but he almost understood it."''

-->-- '''Lovecraft''', ''AtomicRobo''

-->In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.
-->-The narrator of ''The Tomb'' indulges in understatement.

-->“As for the Republicans -- how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.”
-->HPL, who changed / mellowed many of his political and social views later in life, and ended up supporting FDR for president.

->"Howard Phillips Lovecraft, heaven knows, had a talent for writing which was of no mean proportion: only what he did with this talent was a shame, and a caution and an eldritch horror. If he'd only gotten the '''hell''' out of his aunties' attic and obtained a job with the federal writer's project of the WPA, he could have turned out guidebooks that would have been classics and joys to read forever. Only he stayed up there muffled up to the tip of his long gaunt New England chin against the cold which lay more in his heart than in his thermometer, living on 19 cents worth of beans a day, rewriting (for pennies) the crappy manuscripts of writers whose complete illiteracy would have been a boon to all mankind, ah, but life is a boon, and producing ghastly, grisly, ghoulish, and horrifying works of his own as well -- of man-eating things which foraged in graveyards, of human/beastie crosses which grew '''beastlier''' and '''beastlier''' as they grew older, of gibbering Shoggoths and Elder beings which smelt real bad and were always trying to break through thresholds and take over; rugous, squamous, amorphous nasties abbetted by thin, gaunt New England eccentrics who dwelt in attics and who were eventually never seen or heard from again. Serve them damn well right, I say. In short, Howard was a twitch, boys and girls, and that's all there is to it."

->There was a young writer from Providence\\

And dark tomes about alien revenants

-> "[[NightmareRetardant The proper pronunciation of 'Cthulhu' is 'Bob']]"

-> "The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman".

->The Mad Arab, now long dead,
->Known as Abdul Al-hazred
->Writes of things best left unknown;
->Knowledge we claim for our own!
->If we've rightly done our sums
->'Tis not long 'til doomsday comes!
->Soon the gods will make the switch
->To a world that's more eldritch!

->The end of everything. I wrote stories to prepare mankind for this. But no, let's not publish ''Howard!'' No, why do that? How could the world possibly end? We're too clever and handsome to let the vast, impossible ''horror'' of the universe destroy us! I knew this day would come. Mongrels ''or'' extra-dimensional alien gods, either way, it ''would'' come.

->In relating he circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.
---The narrator of ''The Tomb'' indulges in understatement.

->''"Howard Phillips Lovecraft, heaven knows, had a talent for writing which was of no mean proportion: only what he did with this talent was a shame, and a caution and an eldritch horror. If he'd only gotten the '''hell''' out of his aunties' attic and obtained a job with the federal writer's project of the WPA, he could have turned out guidebooks that would have been classics and joys to read forever. Only he stayed up there muffled up to the tip of his long gaunt New England chin against the cold which lay more in his heart than in his thermometer, living on 19 cents worth of beans a day, rewriting (for pennies) the crappy manuscripts of writers whose complete illiteracy would have been a boon to all mankind, ah, but life is a boon, and producing ghastly, grisly, ghoulish, and horrifying works of his own as well -- of man-eating things which foraged in graveyards, of human/beastie crosses which grew '''beastlier''' and '''beastlier''' as they grew older, of gibbering Shoggoths and Elder beings which smelt real bad and were always trying to break through thresholds and take over; rugous, squamous, amorphous nasties abbetted by thin, gaunt New England eccentrics who dwelt in attics and who were eventually never seen or heard from again. Serve them damn well right, I say. In short, Howard was a twitch, boys and girls, and that's all there is to it."''
--> --Rudimentary Peni, "Twitch"

--> --Az0th

->-- '''The Geek [=BBook=]'''

->-- Lovecraft on cats.

->-- [[http://www.journalfen.net/community/the_hms_stfu/239597.html From a filk of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Climbing over Rocky Mountain"]] by Adam Cuerden

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