There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.
H. P. LovecraftRead
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fear of the unknown is a fundamental and powerful human emotion.
In this quote, H. P. Lovecraft expresses the idea that fear is an intrinsic part of human experience, deeply rooted in our nature. The mention of the 'unknown' underscores how uncertainty and ambiguity provoke our most primal fears, suggesting that confronting the unknown is a critical aspect of the human condition.
Themes
FearUnknownEmotionHuman NaturePrimal
In practice
Example use cases
In a psychology lecture discussing the fundamental emotions.
More from H. P. Lovecraft
All quotes →I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
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Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
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The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
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No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
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I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.
H. P. LovecraftRead
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Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
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Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.
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I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries'.
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...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.
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Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.
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