When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
Interpretation
Common objects can evoke stronger emotions than unusual ones, suggesting hidden dangers beneath their surface.
In this quote, Blackwood reflects on how ordinary objects can take on a sinister quality in the darkness. The familiar can become unsettling when perceived through the lens of fear, stimulating the imagination and suggesting hidden malice in the mundane, thereby altering our perception of the world around us.
In practice
During a horror-themed art exhibit, this quote can be used to discuss the unsettling nature of ordinary objects.
Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.
Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear.
A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.
My desire was no less than before, you understand, but I no longer identified with the desire. Perhaps that is why taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.
I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn't know any people from other countries, I'd think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn't it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere?
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
God is always joking. Look at your own life - it is a joke! Look at other people's lives, and you will find jokes and jokes and jokes. Seriousness is illness; seriousness has nothing spiritual about it. Spirituality is laughter, spirituality is joy, spirituality is fun.
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