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.

Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.

It is good to be a cynic - it is better to be a contented cat - and it is best not to exist at all.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.

Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.

I was nearly unnerved at my proximity to a nameless thing at the bottom of a pit.