H.P. Lovecraft
- from Beyond the Wall of Sleep
At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a daemonic ecstasy of bloodthirstiness, shrieking that he would 'jump high in the air, and burned his way through anything that stopped him'. Family and neighbours had now fled in a panic, and when the more courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an unrecognisable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms aloft and commenced a series of leaps directly upward in the air; the while shouting his determination to reach some 'big, big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls and floor, and the loud queer music far away'. As two men of moderate size sought to restrain him, he had struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and need to find and kill a certain 'thing that shines and shakes and laughs'.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Beyond the Wall of Sleep
From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be gathered of his case. This man, a vagabond, hunter, and trapper, had always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had habitually slept at night beyond the usual time, and upon waking would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Dagon
Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Dore. I think that these things were supposed to depict men - at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Dagon
A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Dagon
I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the world into a fathomless chaos of eternal night.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Dagon
The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.
Pericles
The whole earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native Earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from Dagon
But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change happened while I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awakened, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.
H. P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
I yearned mightily to enter this fascinating yet repellent city, and I besought the bearded man to land me at the stone pier by the huge carven gate Akariel; but he gently denied my wish, saying: "Into Thalarion, the City of a Thousand Wonders, many have passed but none returned. There walk only daemons and mad things that are no longer men, and the streets are white with the unburied bones of those that have looked upon the eidolon Lathi, that reigns over the city."
H.P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
And when I looked upon the terraces I saw that what he said was true, for among the sight before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the foggy depths of ocean. There too were forms and fantasies more splendid than any I had ever known; the visions of young poets who died in want before the world could learn what they had seen and dreamed. But we did not set foot upon the sloping meadows of Zar...
H. P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
Very brightly did the moon shine on the night I answered the call, and walked out over the waters to the White Ship on a bridge of moonbeams. The man who had beckoned now spoke a welcome to me in a soft language I seemed to know well, and the hours were filled with soft songs of the oarsmen, as we glided away into a mysterious South, golden with the glow of that full, mellow moon.
H. P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
Out of the South it was the White Ship used to come when the moon was full and high in the heavens. Out of the South it would glide, very smoothly and silently, over the sea. Whether the sea was rough or calm, and whether the wind was friendly or adverse, it would always glide smoothly and silently, its sails distant and its long strange tiers of oars moving rhythmically. One night I espied upon the deck a man, bearded and robed, and he seemed to beckon me to embark for fair unknown shores.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and of the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for the ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.
H. P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of the ocean. Blue, green, grey, white or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent. All my days I have watched it and listened to it, and I know it well. At first it told me only the plain little tales of calm beaches and near ports, but with the years it grew more friendly and spoke of other things; of things more strange, and more distant in space and time.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
Then did the bearded man say to me with tears on his cheek: "We have rejected the beautiful land of Sona-Nyl, which we may never behold again. The gods are greater than men, and they have conquered." And I closed my eyes before the crash that I knew would come, shutting out the sight of the celestial bird which flapped its mocking blue wings over the mouth of the torrent. Out of that crash came darkness, and I heard the shrieking of men and of things which were not men.
H.P. Lovecraft
- from The White Ship
So to the sound of melody the white ship sailed into the mist betwixt the basalt pillars of the West. And when the music ceased and the mist lifted, we beheld not the land of Cathuria, but a swift-rushing resistless sea, over which our helpless barque was borne toward some unknown goal. Soon to our ears cam the distant roar of falling waters, and to our eyes appeared on the far horizon ahead the titanic spray of a monstrous cataract, wherein the oceans of the world drop down into abysmal nothing
Dr. Seuss
- Onward - Oh, The Places You'll Go
But on you will go, though the weather be foul. On you will go, though your enemies prowl. On you will go though the Hakken-Kraks howl. Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. On and on you will hike. And I know you'll hike far and face up to your problems, whatever they are.
Dr. Seuss
- Alone - Oh, The Places You'll Go
All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone will be something you'll be quite a lot. And when you're alone, there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants. There are some, down the road between hither and yon, that can scare you so much you don't want to go on.
