Top 140 Robert E. Howard Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “What always was must always be.”

— Robert E. Howard

102. “When you allow the elevation of a man, one can be sure that you’ll profit by his advancement.”

— Robert E. Howard

103. “No man can be convinced when he will not.”

— Robert E. Howard

104. “So Conan, glaring from under his tousled mane, saw the white naked figure of Natala writhing in the lustful grasp of a black nightmare shape that could have only been bred in the lost pits of hell. The.”

— Robert E. Howard

105. “The five-foot blade crushed Strabonus’ casque and skull, and the king’s charger reared screaming, hurling a limp and sprawling corpse from the saddle. A great cry went up from the host, which faltered and gave back.”

— Robert E. Howard

106. “Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness...”

— Robert E. Howard

107. “Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man.”

— Robert E. Howard

108. “Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure.”

— Robert E. Howard

109. “The wild hetman stood like a statue for a space, dimly grasping something of the cosmic tragedy of the fitful ephemera called mankind and the hooded shapes of darkness which prey upon it.”

— Robert E. Howard

110. “Before the invader sound was born, the Universe was silent and shall be again.”

— Robert E. Howard

111. “I saw that – that black thing squatting like an ape among the branches, leering down at me.”

— Robert E. Howard

112. “I have not been a success, and probably never will be.”

— Robert E. Howard

113. “The printed page was like wine to me.”

— Robert E. Howard

114. “Let him make rimes for the vultures.”

— Robert E. Howard

115. “Don’t you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?”

— Robert E. Howard

116. “The black spoke in a sea-coast dialect, and Conan replied; he had learned the jargon while a corsair on the coasts of Kush. “Long.”

— Robert E. Howard

117. “I am unable to rouse much interest in any highly civilized race, country or epoch, including this one.”

— Robert E. Howard

118. “I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today – which is like the dreams of ghosts!”

— Robert E. Howard

119. “That’s the way with civilized men. When they can’t explain something by their half-baked science, they refuse to believe it.”

— Robert E. Howard

120. “But when the next time approached for the full moon, I began to be aware of a strange, malicious influence. An atmosphere of horror hovered in the air and I was aware of inexplicable, uncanny impulses.”

— Robert E. Howard

121. “In the hill country, civilization steals in last, and the people retain much of the crude but vigorous mode of expression of the colonial days and earlier.”

— Robert E. Howard

122. “It was a convulsion of obscenity, a spasm of lasciviousness – an exudation of secret hungers framed by compulsion: desire without pleasure, pain mated awfully to lust. It was like watching a soul stripped naked, and all its dark and unmentionable secrets laid bare.”

— Robert E. Howard

123. “The thing was not a human – it could not be; it was a growth of Life from the pits of blasphemous creation – a perversion of evolutionary development. The.”

— Robert E. Howard

124. “A true fanatic, his promptings were reasons enough for his actions.”

— Robert E. Howard

125. “Rinaldo wrote me a deathly song there, and keen was the stylus.”

— Robert E. Howard

126. “Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.”

— Robert E. Howard

127. “They were neither the first nor the last to gild the name of thief.”

— Robert E. Howard

128. “It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsmen of the grasslands, from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat stone cities where kings with curled blueblack beards worshipped round-bellied gods with curious rites.”

— Robert E. Howard

129. “These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time.”

— Robert E. Howard

130. “Well, let’s go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats they may as well do it now, before the heat of the day begins.”

— Robert E. Howard

131. “A devil from the Outer Dark,” he grunted. “Oh, they’re nothing uncommon. They lurk as thick as fleas outside the belt of light which surrounds this world. I’ve heard the wise men of Zamora talk of them. Some find their way to Earth, but when they do, they have to take on earthly form and flesh of some sort. A man like myself, with a sword, is a match for any amount of fangs and talons, infernal or terrestrial. Come, my men await me beyond the ridge of the valley.”

— Robert E. Howard

132. “Springing back, sword high, he saw the horror strike the floor, wheel and scuttle toward him with appalling speed – a gigantic black spider, such as men see only in nightmare dreams.”

— Robert E. Howard

133. “Conan stood paralyzed in the disruption of the faculties which demoralizes anyone who is confronted by an impossible negation of sanity.”

— Robert E. Howard

134. “The gods of yesterday become the devils of tomorrow.”

— Robert E. Howard

135. “When I cannot stand alone, it will be time to die,” he mumbled, through mashed lips. “But I’d like a flagon of wine.”

— Robert E. Howard

136. “Crom!” muttered the Cimmerian. “Here is the grandfather of all parrots. He must be a thousand years old! Look at the evil wisdom of his eyes. What mysteries do you guard, Wise Devil?” Abruptly the bird spread its flaming wings and soaring from its perch, cried out harshly: “Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!” and with a wild screech of horribly human laughter, rushed away through the trees to vanish in the opalescent shadows.”

— Robert E. Howard

137. “He had never fled from a single foe, and had the thought occurred to him he would have flushed with shame.”

— Robert E. Howard

138. “A civilized man in his position would have sought doubtful refuge in the conclusion that he was insane; it did not occur to the Cimmerian to doubt his senses. He knew he was face to face with a demon of the Elder World, and the realization robbed him of all his faculties except sight.”

— Robert E. Howard

139. “It’s a mad nightmare,’ I muttered.”

— Robert E. Howard

140. “Each smiled and nodded courteously, and each knew the other lied.”

— Robert E. Howard

141. “You left the fort before daybreak, I was told,” he said to Conan. “I had begun to fear that the Picts had caught you at last.” “When they smoke my head the whole river will know,” grunted Conan. “They’ll hear Pictish women wailing their dead as far as Velitrium – I was on a lone scout. I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing drums talking across the river.”

— Robert E. Howard

142. “The man slumped forward on the table. “Saints and devils!” raged the Wolf. “What does he look like, this Kane?” “Like – Satan –” The voice trailed off in silence. The dead man slid from the table to lie in a red heap upon the floor. “Like Satan!” babbled the other bandit. “I told you! ‘Tis the Horned One himself! I tell you –.”

— Robert E. Howard

143. “Arus the watchman grasped his crossbow with shaky hands, and he felt beads of clammy perspiration on his skin as he stared at the unlovely corpse sprawling on the polished floor before him. It is not pleasant to come upon Death in a lonely place at midnight.”

— Robert E. Howard

144. “It will bear thrice my own,” answered Taurus. “It was woven from the tresses of dead women, which I took from their tombs at midnight, and steeped in the deadly wine of the upas tree, to give it strength. I will go first – then follow me closely.”

— Robert E. Howard

145. “In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.”

— Robert E. Howard