96 Quotes by Algernon Blackwood

The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The strain of physical pressure caused it – this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve.

The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his own utter helplessness.

It was clear, however, that the woman had in herself some secret source of joy, that she was now an aggressive, positive force, sure of herself, and apparently afraid of nothing in heaven or hell.

For nothing could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing – no amount of blazing fire, or chatting on ordinary subjects – could make that camp exactly as it had been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his companion.

Life, using matter to express itself in bodily shape, first traces a geometrical pattern. From the lowest form in crystals, upwards to more complicated patterns in the higher organisations – there is always first this geometrical pattern as skeleton.

Love is known only by feeling it,” she said, her voice deepening a little. “Behind the form you feel the person loved. The process is an evocation, pure and simple. An arduous ceremonial, involving worship and devotional preparation, is the means. It is a difficult ritual – the only one acknowledged by the world as still effectual. Ritual is the passage way of the soul into the Infinite.

Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own.

It is the same with all the emotions,” he said. “The experiences of others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years, he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.

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;.