There were nameless horrors abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one ought tp stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean.

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.

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

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

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.