Algernon Blackwood > Quotes

“Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“To the Sabbath! To the Sabbath!' they cried. 'On to the Witches' Sabbath!"
Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went out, and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his heart with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Complete John Silence Stories

“No place worth knowing yields itself at sight, and those the least
inviting on first view may leave the most haunting pictures upon the
walls of memory.”
― Algernon Blackwood, A Prisoner in Fairyland

“Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. In the case of the latter, no particular feature need betray them; they may boast an open countenance and an ingenuous smile; and yet a little of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is something radically amiss with their being: that they are evil. Willy nilly, they seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret and wicked thoughts which makes those in their immediate neighbourhood shrink from them as from a thing diseased.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

“The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

“Mrs. Bittarcy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile. She feared long words she did not understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too many syllables.”
― Algernon Blackwood, Tales Of The Uncanny And Supernatural

“She had dreamed that she lay beneath a spreading tree somewhere, a tree that whispered with ten thousand soft lips of green; and the dream continued for a moment even after waking.”
― Algernon Blackwood, Tales Of The Uncanny And Supernatural

“The Wise are silent, the Foolish speak, and children are thus led astray.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“Invention has ever imagination and poetry at its heart.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“You know," he went on almost under his breath, "every man who thinks for himself and feels vividly finds he lives in a world of his own, apart, and believes that one day he'll come across, either in a book or in a person, the Priest who shall make it clear to him.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“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.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“For beauty was her accident, and while admirable, was not a determining factor.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“No man can describe to another convincingly wherein lies the magic of the woman who ensnares him.”
― Algernon Blackwood