When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
Interpretation
Common objects can evoke stronger emotions than unusual ones, suggesting hidden dangers beneath their surface.
In this quote, Blackwood reflects on how ordinary objects can take on a sinister quality in the darkness. The familiar can become unsettling when perceived through the lens of fear, stimulating the imagination and suggesting hidden malice in the mundane, thereby altering our perception of the world around us.
In practice
During a horror-themed art exhibit, this quote can be used to discuss the unsettling nature of ordinary objects.
Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.
The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.
Only when it is seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God decides to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision that God need not make in any individual case, can one begin to grasp the biblical view of grace.
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we're stuck in our thoughts. We're out of touch with the open space that is always right here.
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