“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
Algernon Blackwood
Born place: in Shooter's Hill, The United Kingdom
Born date March 14, 1869
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“It's a thin line between what we're calling acceptable and not acceptable. As a leader, you're supposed to know when not to cross it. But how do you know? Does the army teach us how to control our emotions? Does the army teach us how to deal with a friend bleeding out in front of you? No.”
― David Finkel, quote from The Good Soldiers
“It was the shame we knew so well, the shame that drowned us after the selections, and every time we had to watch, or submit to, some outrage: the shame that the Germans did not know, that the just man experiences at another man's crime; the feeling of guilt that such a crime should exist, that it should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that his will for good should have proved too weak or null, and should not have availed in defense.”
― Primo Levi, quote from If This Is a Man / The Truce
“My point is, it takes a special person to cry over a book. It shows compassion as well as imagination...Don't ever lose that”
― quote from George
“Now answer me, sincerely, honestly, who lives past forty? I'll tell you who does: fools and scoundrels.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Notes from the Underground
“Amanda’s life and identity would be just as valid if she didn’t figure herself out until later in life, or if she were a tomboy, or if she were bisexual or a lesbian or asexual, or if she had trouble passing, or if she either could not or chose not to get “bottom” surgery.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl
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The OvercoatBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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