20+ Arthur Machen Quotes On Education, Nature And Death

Arthur Machen was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella, The Great God Pan (1890), has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Arthur Machen on education, life, nature.

Every branch of human knowledge, if traced up to its source and final principles, vanishes into mystery. — Arthur Machen

Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes. — Arthur Machen

We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me? — Arthur Machen

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible. — Arthur Machen

I dream in fire but work in clay. — Arthur Machen

There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

silence is not weakness and decency is not pride — Arthur Machen

There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper. — Arthur Machen

Old stories often turn out to be true. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

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. — Arthur Machen

Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics of the world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in The Evening News about ten months ago. — Arthur Machen

The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall. — Arthur Machen

Life Lessons by Arthur Machen

1. Arthur Machen's work shows the importance of exploring the unknown and embracing the power of imagination. He encourages readers to look beyond conventional beliefs and delve into the supernatural and mystical aspects of life.
2. Machen's works are often dark and mysterious, emphasizing the power of the human mind and the importance of understanding the unknown.
3. His stories often explore the themes of faith, morality, and the power of the supernatural, teaching readers to be open-minded and to think critically about the world around them.