Top 70 Algernon Blackwood Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Ritual is the passage way of the soul into the Infinite.”

— Algernon Blackwood

2. “The Wise are silent, the Foolish speak, and children are thus led astray.”

— Algernon Blackwood

3. “Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.”

— Algernon Blackwood

4. “And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.”

— Algernon Blackwood

5. “Time is measured by the quality and not the quanity of sensations it contains.”

— Algernon Blackwood

6. “I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed.”

— Algernon Blackwood

7. “And each, believing he was utterly and finally right, damned with equally positive conviction the rest of the world.”

— Algernon Blackwood

8. “I forgot the shaking of the willows in the windless calm, the humming overhead, everything except that I was waiting for an answer that I dreaded more than I can possibly explain.”

— Algernon Blackwood

9. “To be everywhere at once and to know everybody was, after all, but to slip the cables of the tiny, separate self, and experience the Whole. Hence the desire to be elsewhere and otherwise. Hence, too, the innate yearning to share experiences of all kinds with others.”

— Algernon Blackwood

10. “The dark side of life, and the horror of it, belonged to a world that lay remote from his own select little atmosphere of books and dreamings.”

— Algernon Blackwood

11. “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.”

— Algernon Blackwood

12. “It’s the willows themselves humming, because here the willows have been made symbols of the forces that are against us.”

— Algernon Blackwood

13. “It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs on surrounding scenes and objects and whoever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon?”

— Algernon Blackwood

14. “The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees.”

— Algernon Blackwood

15. “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

16. “But the wicked passions of men’s hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist the good are ever too luke-warm.”

— Algernon Blackwood

17. “The Gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.”

— Algernon Blackwood

18. “What one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens.”

— Algernon Blackwood

19. “Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of fire!”

— Algernon Blackwood

20. “Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.”

— Algernon Blackwood

21. “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.”

— Algernon Blackwood

22. “Death, according to one’s belief, means either annihilation or release from the limitations of the senses, but it involves no change of character. You don’t suddenly alter just because the body’s gone.”

— Algernon Blackwood

23. “The best match in the world will not light a candle unless the wick be first suitably prepared.”

— Algernon Blackwood

24. “The bleak splendors of these remote and lonely forests rather overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled backwoods which can only be described as merciless and terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his own utter helplessness.”

— Algernon Blackwood

25. “So convinced was he that the external world was the result of a vast deception practised upon him by the gross senses, that when he stared at a great building like St. Paul’s he felt it would not very much surprise him to see it suddenly quiver like a shape of jelly and then melt utterly away, while in its place stood all at once revealed the mass of colour, or the great intricate vibrations, or the splendid sound – the spiritual idea – which it represented in stone.”

— Algernon Blackwood

26. “No man can describe to another convincingly wherein lies the magic of the woman who ensnares him.”

— Algernon Blackwood

27. “It was clear, however, that the woman had in herself some secret source of joy, that she was now an aggressive, positive force, sure of herself, and apparently afraid of nothing in heaven or hell.”

— Algernon Blackwood

28. “This feeble attempt at self-deception only makes the truth harder when you’re forced to meet it.”

— Algernon Blackwood

29. “Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.”

— Algernon Blackwood

30. “His most vulnerable points, moreover, are said to be the feet and the eyes; the feet, you see, for the lust of wandering, and the eyes for the lust of beauty. The poor beggar goes at such a dreadful speed that he bleeds beneath the eyes, and his feet burn.”

— Algernon Blackwood

31. “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

32. “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;.”

— Algernon Blackwood

33. “I wish I were not quite so lonely – and 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 upon women.”

— Algernon Blackwood

34. “Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil.”

— Algernon Blackwood

35. “And it was in that moment of distress and confusion that the whip of terror laid its most nicely calculated lash about his heart.”

— Algernon Blackwood

36. “It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs upon surrounding scenes and objects,” the other added, “and who ever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon? It is unfortunate. But the wicked passions of men’s hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist; the good are ever too luke-warm.”

— Algernon Blackwood

37. “They talked trees from morning till night. It stirred in her the old subconscious trail of dread, a trail that led ever into the darkness of big woods; and such feelings, as her early evangelical training taught her, were temptings. To regard them in any other way was to play with danger.”

— Algernon Blackwood

38. “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

39. “Our thoughts make spirals in their world.”

— Algernon Blackwood

40. “The situation called for a courage and calmness of reasoning that neither of us could compass, and I have never before seen so clearly conscious of two persons in me-the one that explained everything, and the other that laughed at such foolish explanations, yet was horribly afraid.”

— Algernon Blackwood

41. “It is, of course, extremely interesting to look back across the years questioningly, wonderingly, objectively, without detachments, though seeing “objectively” does not necessarily imply seeing truthfully.”

— Algernon Blackwood

42. “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

43. “And, with the dark, the Forest came up boldly and pressed against the very walls and windows, peering in upon them, joining hands above the slates and chimneys.”

— Algernon Blackwood

44. “For nothing could explain away the livid terror that had dropped over his face while he stood there sniffing the air. And nothing – no amount of blazing fire, or chatting on ordinary subjects – could make that camp exactly as it had been before. The shadow of an unknown horror, naked if unguessed, that had flashed for an instant in the face and gestures of the guide, had also communicated itself, vaguely and therefore more potently, to his companion.”

— Algernon Blackwood

45. “The whole dead weight of my growing fear fell upon me and shook me. Then I burst out laughing too. It was the only thing to do: and the sound of my laughter also made me understand his. The strain of physical pressure caused it – this explosion of unnatural laughter in both of us; it was an effort of repressed forces to seek relief; it was a temporary safety-valve.”

— Algernon Blackwood

46. “He understood now why the world was strange, why horses galloped furiously, and why trains whistled as they raced through stations.”

— Algernon Blackwood

47. “Mountains overawe and oceans terrify, while the mystery of great forests exercises a spell peculiarly its own.”

— Algernon Blackwood

48. “They have put it into my mind; try your hardest to prevent their putting it into yours.”

— Algernon Blackwood

49. “Of course it was nonsense, but then it haunted him, and once an idea begins to do that it ceases to be nonsense. It has clothed itself in reality.”

— Algernon Blackwood

50. “All my life,” he said, “I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region – not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind – where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance.”

— Algernon Blackwood