Robert Chambers Quotes

#1. Have you seen The Yellow Sign?

Robert W. Chambers

#2. Like swimming squirrels, you navigate with the help of Heaven and a stiff breeze, but you never land where you hope to - do you?

Robert W. Chambers

#3. What a precious triple donkey I had made of myself!

Robert W. Chambers

#4. Ah," she said, "to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different - and may take centuries.

Robert W. Chambers

#5. The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare; and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the Lake of Hali chilled my face.
("In The Court of the Dragon")

Robert W. Chambers

#6. Perfection can be overdone; a rift in a lute relieves melodious monotony, and when discords cease to amuse, one can always have the instrument mended or buy a banjo.

Robert W. Chambers

#7. Strange is the night where black stars rise,
and strange moons circle through the skies,
but stranger still is
lost Carcosa.

Robert W. Chambers

#8. Unsavoury as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard, honest work above.
("In The Court Of The Dragon")

Robert W. Chambers

#9. I am one of maybe three people in the world who knows anything about Robert W. Chambers.

S.T. Joshi

#10. Man is not God but hath God's end to serve, A master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. Grant this, then man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. - Robert Browning

Oswald Chambers

#11. I had never yet done such a thing in life, but now I felt a desire to mock.
("In The Court Of The Dragon")

Robert W. Chambers

#12. There a painless death awaits him who can no longer bear the sorrows of this life. If death is welcome let him seek it there.

Robert W. Chambers

#13. He is a king whom emperors have served.

Robert W. Chambers

#14. No, he is not vicious, nor is he in the least demented. His mind is a wonder chamber, from which he can extract treasures that you and I would give years of our life to acquire.

Robert W. Chambers

#15. Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2.

Robert W. Chambers

#16. Let the red dawn surmise What we shall do, When this blue starlight dies And all is through.
(The Yellow Sign)

Robert W. Chambers

#17. I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.

Robert W. Chambers

#18. I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow.

Robert W. Chambers

#19. If you treat with courtesy your equal, who is privileged to resent an impertinence, how much more cautious should you be to your dependents, from whom you demand a respectful demeanor.

Robert Chambers

#20. Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die though, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa

Robert W. Chambers

#21. It is possible that his curiosity was piqued, for with the exception of a hen-turkey, a boy of nineteen is the most openly curious biped alive.

Robert W. Chambers

#22. read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet.

Robert W. Chambers

#23. The mask of self-deception was not longer a mask for me, it was a part of me. Night lifted it, laying bare the stifled truth below; but there was no one to see except myself, and when day broke the mask fell back again of its own accord.

Robert W. Chambers

#24. The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts,

Robert W. Chambers

#25. For I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now.

Robert W. Chambers

#26. The science-fictional motif of lethal, infectious information - bad memes - is a fascinating one, with an extended history. One of the earliest instances is Robert W. Chambers's 'The King in Yellow' from 1895. Chambers's conceit is a malevolent play: read beyond Act II, and you go mad.

Paul Di Filippo

#27. Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors that they are ready to repeat their lessons as often as we please.

Robert Chambers

#28. Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

Robert W. Chambers

#29. Harold,' she would say, 'do you think I'm a fool? If I place the Crimson Diamond in any safe-deposit vault in New York, somebody will steal it, sooner or later.' Then she would nibble a sprig of catnip and peer cunningly at me.

Robert W. Chambers

#30. The time had come, the people should know the son of Hastur, and the whole world bow to the black stars which hang in the sky over Carcosa.

Robert W. Chambers