There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.
Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the buildings around us may have emotions or dreams, reflecting human experiences and struggles.
H. P. Lovecraft's quote evokes the idea that inanimate objects, like houses, might possess their own dreams or stories, highlighting the deep connection between human existence and the environment. The term 'merciful' implies a sense of empathy for these structures, as if they, too, bear the weight of history and the dreams of those who reside within them. This contemplation points to the broader philosophical implications of existence and the projection of human emotions onto the world around us.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could inspire a discussion about the emotional weight of our living spaces during a speech on architecture.
More from H. P. Lovecraft
All quotes →I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.
I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.
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In any language it is a struggle to make a sentence say exactly what you mean.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
Within this arena, which grows more stable night after day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an idea.
Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.