Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.

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.

I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.

I could not help feeling that they were evil things -- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.

There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.

The human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure 'Victorian fictions'. Only egotism exists.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.