Quotes from The Willows

Algernon Blackwood ·  105 pages

Rating: (5K votes)


“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Willows


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


“They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other, forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost—rising up in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see. Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with a hue of dull bronze upon their skins. I”
― Algernon Blackwood, quote from The Willows


“But you're quite right about one thing," he added, before the subject passed, "and that is that we're wiser not to talk about it, or even to think about it, because what one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens." That”
― Algernon Blackwood, quote from The Willows



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


“Y era como la vaga y desagradable idea de que sin darnos cuenta, habíamos estado bromeando con estas grandes fuerzas elementales en cuyo poder estábamos indefensos, cada hora del día y de la noche. Pues aquí, sin duda, estaban en juego poderes gigantescos, cuyo solo aspecto visual estimulaba ya la imaginación.”
― Algernon Blackwood, quote from The Willows


About the author

Algernon Blackwood
Born place: in Shooter's Hill, The United Kingdom
Born date March 14, 1869
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Popular quotes

“What is truth? What is falsehood? Whatever gives wings to men, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts up a man's height above the earth - that's true. Whatever clips off man's wings - that's false.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, quote from The Last Temptation of Christ


“Marrer of Middle-earth, would that I might see you face to face, and mar you as my lord Fingolfin did!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Children of Húrin


“Simple. Judaism had its day, and if the Jews had been smart, when Christianity came along they’d have joined up. Christianity has had its day, and if you were intelligent you’d both join the newest religion. Islam!” He bowed low and said, “Soon all Africa will be Islamic. And all Black America. I see India giving up Hinduism while Burma and Thailand surrender Buddhism. Gentlemen, I represent the religion of the future. I offer you salvation.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Source


“Нищо няма начало.
Няма първи миг, няма една дума или едно място, които да поставят началото на тази, или която и да е история.
Винаги може да се проследят нишките назад, до някоя предишна приказка, и до още по-ранни приказки — макар че колкото по-далечен става гласът на разказвача, толкова по-слаби изглеждат връзките — всяка епоха изисква приказката да се разказва така, сякаш е създадена през нея.
Така езичниците стават светци, трагичното — смешно, влюбените стават сантиментални, а демоните — механични играчки.
Нищо не е неизменно. Совалката влиза и излиза, факти и измислици, дух и материя, втъкани в мотиви, а общото помежду им е може би само това: сред тях е скрит филигран, който с времето ще се превърне в един свят.

В такъв случай мястото, което ще изберем за начало, трябва да бъде произволно.
Някъде между полузабравено минало и бъдеще, което засега сме зърнали само за миг.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Weaveworld


“Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn’t surprise us, as astonishing to experience as it may be. You can try yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely. My stupid, stupid Merry dear, stupider even that your stupid father, not even blowing up buildings helps. It’s lonely if there are buildings and it’s lonely if there are buildings and it’s lonely if there are no buildings. There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness⎯not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethal of manmade explosives can’t touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness.”
― Philip Roth, quote from American Pastoral


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