The Case of Charles Dexter Ward Quotes

“Do not call up that which you cannot put down.”
― H P Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“Memory sometimes makes merciful deletions.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker’s perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnamable realities behind the protective illusions of common vision.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“With hidden powers of unknown extent apparently at his disposal, Curwen was not a man who could safely be warned to leave town.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“It was a godless sound; one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine, or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its most quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“Have only this consolation--that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“But for some reason or other Curwen did not care for society. Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane. There seemed to lurk in his bearing some cryptic, sardonic arrogance, as if he had come to find all human beings dull through having moved among stranger and more potent entities.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“Allen was perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting him as an avatar of the long-dead Curwen.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“God! Could it be possible that here lay the mortal relics of half the titan thinkers of all the ages; snatched by supreme ghouls from crypts where the world thought them safe, and subject to the beck and call of madmen who sought to drain their knowledge for some still wilder end whose ultimate effect would concern, as poor Charles had hinted in his frantic note, ‘all civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system and the universe’?”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

“Then a yell of utter, ultimate fright and stark madness wrenched from scores of human throats—a yell which came strong and clear despite the depth from which it must have burst; after which darkness and silence ruled all things.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward