Sal > Sal's Quotes

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“I dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger's kin.

I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.

I dreamed--and this dream was the finest--
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“Reality denied comes back to haunt.”
― Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Everything in life is just for a while.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“This is a mournful discovery.
1)Those who agree with you are insane
2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H. P. Lovercraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

“In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulu waits dreaming”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft

“It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

“There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep

“There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
― H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu: With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss