"Our modern worship of empty ideals is ludicrous. What does the condition of the rabble matter? All we need do is to keep it as quiet as we can. What is more important, is to perpetuate those things of beauty which are of real value because involving actual sense-impressions rather than vapid theories. "Equality" is a joke — but a great abbey or cathedral, covered with moss, is a poignant reality. If it is for us to safeguard and preserve the conditions which produce great abbeys, and palaces, and picturesque walled town, and vivid sky-lines of steeples and domes, and luxurious tapestries, and fascinating books, paintings and statuary, and colossal organs and noble music, and dramatic deeds on embattled fields — these are all there is of life: take them away and we have nothing which a man of taste or spirit would care to live for. Take them away and our poets have nothing to sing — our dreamers have nothing to dream about. The blood of a million men is well shed in producing one glorious legend which thrills posterity and it is not at all important why it was shed."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Horror authorsAbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesCritics of religionAgnostics from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Letter to James F. Morton (February 10, 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that m…"
"I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-kno…"
"Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous glo…"
"In cloud-ships the gods are wont to travel, and wise cotters have legends that keep them from certain high peaks at n…"
"Your wonderment 'what I have against religion' reminds me of your recent Vagrant essay . . . To my mind, that essay m…"
"What do we know ... of the world and the universe about us? Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and …"
"Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you."
"There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. W…"
"Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the peaks where once they dwelt, and we…"
"I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end …"