List of Arthur Machen Quotes

Very Softly, But Very Swiftly, Last, The Man With The Grey Face And The Staring Eyes, Bolted For His Life, Down And Away From The White House. Once In The Road, Free From The Fields And Brakes, He Changed His Run Into A Walk, And He Never Paused Or Stopped, Till He Came With A Gulp Of Relief Into The Ugly Streets Of The Big Industrial Town. He Made Hi Way To The Station At Once, And Found That He Was An Hour Too Soon For The London Express. So, There Was Plenty Of Time For Breakfast; Which Consisted Of Brandy.

It Is All Nonsense, To Be Sure; And So Much The Greater Nonsense Inasmuch As The True Interpretation Of Many Dreams - Not By Any Means Of All Dreams - Moves, It May Be Said, In The Opposite Direction To The Method Of Psycho-analysis.

And It Is Utterly True That He Who Cannot Find Wonder, Mystery, Awe, The Sense Of A New World And An Undiscovered Realm In The Places By The Gray's Inn Road Will Never Find These Secrets Elsewhere.

If A Man Dreams That He Has Committed A Sin Before Which The Sun Hid His Face, It Is Often Safe To Conjecture That, In Sheer Forgetfulness, He Wore A Red Tie, Or Brown Boots With Evening Dress.

For, Usually And Fitly, The Presence Of An Introduction Is Held To Imply That There Is Something Of Consequence And Importance To Be Introduced.

It Appears To Me That It [sin] Is Simply An Attempt To Penetrate Into Another And Higher Sphere In A Forbidden Manner. You Can Understand Why It Is So Rare. There Are Few, Indeed, Who Wish To Penetrate Into Other Spheres, Higher Or Lower, In Ways Allowed Or Forbidden. Men, In The Mass, Are Amply Content With Life As They Find It. Therefore There Are Few Saints, And Sinners (in The Proper Sense) Are Fewer Still.

Now, Everybody, I Suppose, Is Aware That In Recent Years The Silly Business Of Divination By Dreams Has Ceased To Be A Joke And Has Become A Very Serious Science.

Silence Is Not Weakness And Decency Is Not Pride

There Are Certain Scenes, Certain Hills And Valleys And Groves Of Pines Which Demand That A Story Shall Be Written About Them. I Would Refine; I Would Say That The Emotions Aroused By These External Things Reverberating In The Heart Are Indeed The Story; Or All That Signifies The Story....we Translate A Hill Into A Tale, Conceive Lovers To Explain A Brook, Turn The Perfect Into The Imperfect.

And There Were Other Rocks That Were Like Animals, Creeping, Horrible Animals, Putting Out Their Tongues, And Others Were Like Words I Could Not Say, And Others Like Dead People Lying On The Grass. I Went On Among Them, Though They Frightened Me, And My Heart Was Full Of Wicked Song They Put Into It; And I Wanted To Make Faces And Twist Myself About The Way They Did, And I Went On And On A Long Way Till At Last I Liked The Rocks And They Didn’t Frighten Me Any More

We Both Wondered Whether These Contradictions That One Can't Avoid If One Begins To Think Of Time And Space May Not Really Be Proofs That The Whole Of Life Is A Dream, And The Moon And Stars Bits Of Nightmare.

Old Stories Often Turn Out To Be True.