The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

by H.P. Lovecraft

say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings;

“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”34

Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic majesty of this dripping Babylon of elder daemons, and must have guessed without guidance that it was nothing of this or of any sane planet.

The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident.

Death would be a boon if only it could blot out the memories.

What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.

the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight.