Top 100 Robert E. Howard Quotes
#1. They realize their ultimate doom, but they are fatalists, incapable of resistance or escape. Not one of the present generation has been out of sight of these walls.
Robert E. Howard
#2. When the oceans drown the world, women will take time for jealousy.
Robert E. Howard
#4. I have no fear of the Hereafter. An orthodox hell could hardly be more torture than my life has been.
Robert E. Howard
#5. not trouble his head about them; he knew that Zamora's religion, like all things of a civilized, longsettled people, was intricate and complex, and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals.
Robert E. Howard
#6. But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.
Robert E. Howard
#7. How can I wear the harness of toil
And sweat at the daily round,
While in my soul forever
The drums of Pictdom sound?
Robert E. Howard
#8. It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.
Robert E. Howard
#9. I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of.
Robert E. Howard
#11. All fled - all done, so lift me on the pyre
The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.
Robert E. Howard
#12. Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.
Robert E. Howard
#13. Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian.
Robert E. Howard
#14. Man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes.
Robert E. Howard
#15. 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
#16. the mere fact of a black figure racing across the landscape carrying a white captive was bizarre enough,
Robert E. Howard
#17. Conan, grim, blood-stained, naked but for a loin-cloth, shackles on his mighty limbs, his blue eyes blazing beneath the tangled black mane which fell over his low broad forehead.
Robert E. Howard
#18. The poem you sent me was as fiery and virile as anything you've ever written - or anybody else, for that matter. Especially the second part went to my brain like the flaming liquor of insanity. No one else besides Jack London has the power to move me just that way.
Robert E. Howard
#21. You black dog!" A red mist of fury swept across Conan's eyes. "Were I free I'd give you a broken back!
Robert E. Howard
#23. It is an ill thing to meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk.
Robert E. Howard
#24. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.
Robert E. Howard
#25. It is not pleasant to come upon Death in a lonely place at midnight.
Robert E. Howard
#26. I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed.
Robert E. Howard
#27. But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality.
Robert E. Howard
#30. Wits and swords are as straws against the wisdom of the Darkness ...
Robert E. Howard
#31. Men spoke of tribal war, of a gathering of vultures in the southeast, and a terrible leader who led his swiftly increasing hordes to victory.
Robert E. Howard
#32. For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.
Robert E. Howard
#33. They take little interest in waking life, choosing to lie most of the time in death-like sleep." "Then
Robert E. Howard
#34. I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write.
Robert E. Howard
#35. Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence - whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.
Robert E. Howard
#36. Never the less, it is no light thing to enter into a profession absolutely foreign and alien to the people among which one's lot is cast; a profession which seems as dim and faraway and unreal as the shores of Europe.
Robert E. Howard
#37. Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
Robert E. Howard
#38. Gleaming shell of an outworn lie; fable of Right divine
You gained your crowns by heritage, but Blood was the price of mine.
The throne that I won by blood and sweat , by Crom, I will not sell
For promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!
Robert E. Howard
#39. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat & stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame crimson, and I am content ... Conan the Cimmerian.
Robert E. Howard
#40. My body seems a mere encumbrance to me; an imbecillic wagon, hitched to the horse of desire, which is the soul.
Robert E. Howard
#41. Rome got some peachy pastings when she tried to lick the Irish.
Robert E. Howard
#42. They trapped the Lion on Shamu's plain; They weighted his limbs with an iron chain; They cried aloud in the trumpet-blast, They cried, "The lion is caged at last!" Woe to the Cities of river and plain If ever the Lion stalks again! - Old Ballad.
Robert E. Howard
#44. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.
Robert E. Howard
#45. Man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream
that is real, that is immortal.
Robert E. Howard
#46. Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.
Robert E. Howard
#47. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.
Robert E. Howard
#48. 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
#49. Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally - oh, very rarely! - the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.
Robert E. Howard
#50. The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!
Robert E. Howard
#51. When you allow the elevation of a man, one can be sure that you'll profit by his advancement.
Robert E. Howard
#52. Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race; but to a black man gold can never pay for blood.
Robert E. Howard
#53. What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king.
Robert E. Howard
#54. Conan mentally termed the creatures black men, for lack of a better term; instinctively he knew that these tall ebony beings were not men, as he understood the term. No
Robert E. Howard
#55. But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.
Robert E. Howard
#56. Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?
Robert E. Howard
#57. A true fanatic, his promptings were reasons enough for his actions.
Robert E. Howard
#58. These figures are black, yet they are not like negroes. I have never seen their like." "Let
Robert E. Howard
#60. A woman in such an emotional tempest is as perilous as a blind cobra to any about her.
Robert E. Howard
#64. He was no defensive fighter; even in the teeth of overwhelming odds he always carried the war to the enemy.
Robert E. Howard
#65. Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.
Robert E. Howard
#66. We're making tin gods out of those poor buffoons in Hollywood; I dote on movies and appreciate the scanty art therein but I consider the profession about the most debased and debasing I know.
Robert E. Howard
#67. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
Robert E. Howard
#68. It was no ape, neither was it a man. It was some shambling horror spawned in the mysterious, nameless jungles of the south, where strange life teemed in the reeking rot without the dominance of man, and drums thundered in temples that had never known the tread of a human foot.
Robert E. Howard
#69. What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.
Robert E. Howard
#70. My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.
Robert E. Howard
#71. What is death but a traversing of eternities and a crossing of cosmic oceans?
Robert E. Howard
#73. It is only the promise of death that makes life worth living.
Robert E. Howard
#74. I see in the papers where Roy Guthrie committed suicide. Why, I wonder?
Robert E. Howard
#75. I'm not going out of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn't step out of my path to let one go by.
Robert E. Howard
#76. A pantherish twist and shift of his body avoided the blundering rush of two yellow swordsmen, and the blade of one missing its objective, was sheathed in the breast of the other. A
Robert E. Howard
#78. Blast your soul, you hussy!" he exclaimed in exasperation.
Robert E. Howard
#79. A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.
Robert E. Howard
#80. I have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret oceans of which it knows nothing.
Robert E. Howard
#82. Men are but men, and the greatest men are they who soonest learn the simpler things.
Robert E. Howard
#83. While we may open the books of the past, we may but grant flying glances of the future, through the mist that veils it.
Robert E. Howard
#84. I am unable to rouse much interest in any highly civilized race, country or epoch, including this one.
Robert E. Howard
#85. I have accomplished little enough, but such as it is, it is the result of my own efforts.
Robert E. Howard
#86. There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage," answered the Cimmerian
Robert E. Howard
#87. The people among which I lived - and yet live, mainly - made their living from cotton, wheat, cattle, oil, with the usual percentage of business men and professional men.
Robert E. Howard
#88. 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
#89. I have gone into yesterday and tomorrow and both were as real as today
which is like the dreams of ghosts!
Robert E. Howard
#90. If I was wealthy I'd never do anything but poke around in ruined cities all over the world - and probably get snake-bit.
Robert E. Howard
#91. When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat, The people scattered gold-dust before my horses feet; But now I am a great king, the people hound my track With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back. - The Road of Kings. The
Robert E. Howard
#92. Youngsters of this generation seem not quite so hazardous except in the way of mechanical speed, bad liquor and venereal diseases.
Robert E. Howard
#93. Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn.
Robert E. Howard
#94. The sea-road is good for wanderers and landless men. There is quenching of thirst on the grey paths of the winds, and the flying clouds to still the sting of lost dreams.
Robert E. Howard
#96. Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.
Robert E. Howard
#97. The moon rose, striking fire from the Cimmerian's horned helmet. No call awoke the echoes; yet suddenly the night grew tense and the jungle held its breath. Instinctively Conan loosened the great sword in its sheath.
Robert E. Howard
#98. When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in ... Who will our invaders be? From whence will they come?
Robert E. Howard
#99. Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man.
Robert E. Howard
#100. 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
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