An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.

No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.

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

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.

The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the least concrete and describable.

With hidden powers of unknown extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town.

It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes.