It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.

- Arthur Machen

We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me?

- Arthur Machen

In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.

- Arthur Machen

I dream in fire but work in clay.

- Arthur Machen

Very softly, but very swiftly, Last, the man with the grey face and the staring eyes, bolted for his life, down and away from the White House. Once i…

- Arthur Machen

Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace thin…

- Arthur Machen

There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and sh…

- Arthur Machen

We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole o…

- Arthur Machen

Old stories often turn out to be true.

- Arthur Machen