The Willows Quotes

“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

“Great revelations of nature, of course, never fail to impress in one way or another, and I was no stranger to moods of the kind. Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid; for the wanderer, especially, camps have their "note" either of welcome or rejection.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The loneliness of the place had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not quite safe, to be overheard.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“What one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“This feeble attempt at self-deception only makes the truth harder when you're forced to meet it”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it, even to make use of it!”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“All my life," he said, "I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region—not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind—where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessity, just as some working explanation of the universe is necessary—however absurd—to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own. But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Our thoughts make spirals in their world.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“We had “strayed,” as the Swede put it, into some region or some set of conditions where the risks were great, yet unintelligible to us; where the frontiers of some unknown world lay close about us. It was a spot
held by the dwellers in some outer space, a sort of peep-hole whence they could spy upon the earth, themselves unseen, a point where the veil between had worn a little thin. As the final result of too long a sojourn here, we should be carried over the border
and deprived of what we called “our lives,” yet by mental, not physical, processes. In that sense, as he said, we should be the victims of our adventure—a sacrifice.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before seen so clearly conscious of two persons in me-the one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“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;”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“But all these, at one point or another, somewhere link on intimately with human life and human experience. They stir comprehensible, even if alarming, emotions. They tend on the whole to exalt.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Midway in my delight of the wild beauty, there crept, unbidden and unexplained, a curious feeling of disquietude, almost of alarm.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows: Supernatural Stories; Tales of Ghosts and Mystery - Haunting Tales: Unveiling the Secrets of The Willows and Other Supernatural Stories by Algernon Blackwood

“I was conscious only of a sort of enveloping sensation of icy fear that plucked the nerves out of their fleshly covering, twisted them this way and that, and replaced them quivering.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“It’s the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Do not menion them more than you help. Do not refer to them by name. To name is to reveal; it is the inevitable clue, and our only hope lies in ignoring them, in order that they may ignore us.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I can possibly explain.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“We must keep our minds quiet-it’s our minds they feel.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The whole experience whose verge we touched was unknown to humanity at all. It was a new order of experience, and in the true sense of the word unearthly.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The examination I made of the shore did not assist this theory, but all the same I clung to it with diminishing portion of my intelligence which I called my "reason." An explanation of some kind was an absolute necessary - however absurd - to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“the knowledge that my mind was so receptive to such dangerous imaginings brought the additional terror that it was through our minds and not through our physical bodies that the attack would come, and was coming.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“I must have stood on that little pinnacle of sand longer than I knew,”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“The idea was so bizarre, so absurd, that I felt inclined to laugh.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

“Yet all the time my nervousness and malaise increased appreciably.”
― Algernon Blackwood, The Willows