I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars. . . . I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. . . .

If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with stranger aeons, even Death may die.

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.