Algernon Blackwood Quotes (19 Quotes)

And yet this house in the square, that seemed precisely similar to its fifty ugly neighbours, was as a matter of fact entirely differenthorribly different.

And something born of the snowy desolation, born of the midnight and the silent grandeur, born of the great listening hollows of the night, something that lay 'twixt terror and wonder, dropped from the vast wintry spaces down into his heartand called him

The sound traveled pleasantly over the water, but the forest at their backs seemed to swallow it down with a single gulp that permitted neither echo nor resonance.

The winds were about and walking.

He was not necessarily a coward, though, perhaps, a man of untried nerve.

He took the brandy flask and poured out a glass of neat spirit, stiff enough to help anybody over anything.

He was among men who cloaked their lives with religion in order to follow their real purposes unseen of men.

It used to puzzle him that, after dark, someone would look in round the edge of the bedroom door, and withdraw again too rapidly for him to see the face.

I wish I were not quite so lonelyand so poor. And yet I love both my loneliness and my poverty. The former makes me appreciate the companionship of the wind and rain, while the latter preserves my liver and prevents me wasting time in dancing attendance

My imagination requires a judicious rein I am afraid to let it loose, for it carries me sometimes into appalling places beyond the stars and beneath the world.

Something plucked at my heart and made me feel afraid.

But sleep, in the long run, proves greater than all emotions.

Mrs. Bittacy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile. She feared long words she did not understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too many syllables.

It was October, and the air was cool and sharp, woodsmoke and damp moss exquisitely mingled in it with the subtle odours of the pines.

Resignation brings a curious large courage--when there is nothing more to lose. The soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cut sometimes to the heights

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.

Yet, ever at the back of his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness the indifference to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of man.

He understood now why the world was strange, why horses galloped furiously, and why trains whistled as they raced through stations. All the comedy and terror of nightmare gripped his heart with pincers made of ice.

Fingers of snow brushed the surface of his heart. The power and quiet majesty of the winter's night appalled him.