H. P. Lovecraft Quotes

I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me.

...the nervous systems of other animals were not artificially constructed - as a robot might be artificially constructed - to mimic the pain behavior of humans. A capacity to feel pain obviously enhances a species' prospects of survival...it is surely unreasonable to suppose that nervous systems that are virtually identical physiologically, have a common origin and a common evolutionary function, and result in similar forms of behavior in similar circumstances should actually operate in an entirely different manner on the level of subjective feelings.

I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves.

At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans. To perceive this and to do something to change it in personal and public ways is to undergo a change of perception akin to a religious conversion. Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.

Men will never be great in theology until they are great in suffering.

For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain... For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God." From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good.

You can walk out on me tonight, if you think that it ain't feeling right, but darling, there's no getting over me.

Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs [in the song 'The Vatican Rag'], I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.

You know what they're writing about Baby you know what they're writing about It's a thing called love down through the ages Makes you wanna cry sometimes Makes you feel like you wanna lay down and die sometimes Makes you high sometimes But when you really get in it lifts you right up.

The silence was unbearable to him. If the pictures could have reflected the feelings inside him, they would have been screaming in pain.

I declare I know no state of soul more dangerous than to imagine we are born again and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, because we have picked up a few religious feelings.

He is not far off; He is there, very close. He is looking at us, and He is begging this sorrow, this agony from us. He needs it for souls and for our soul... Alas, it does pain Him to give us sorrows to drink, but He knows this is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself and to become God's ourselves.

I think the important thing to learn is that we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

Physical pain is easily forgotten, but a moral chagrin lasts indefinitely.

I listen to blues music a lot and that's a good person feeling bad and celebrating that pain by releasing it in that kind of joyous fashion.

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

Grief will happen either as an open healing wound or a closed festering wound, either honestly or dishonestly, either appropriately or inappropriately. But emotions will be expressed.

The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events-both yours and those of others-is to change the way you behold them.

I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.

No wonder male religious leaders so often say that humans were born in sin—because we were born to female creatures. Only by obeying the rules of the patriarchy can we be reborn through men. No wonder priests and ministers in skirts sprinkle imitation birth fluid over our heads, give us new names, and promise rebirth into everlasting life.

It’s precisely because of the pain, the we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it.

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and vital than a man of genius who interests us.

I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again.

We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him.