Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.
~
The Call of Cthulhu
by
H. P. Lovecraft
I shall never sleep calmly again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in space, and of those unhallowed blasphemies from elder stars which dream beneath the sea, known and favoured by a nightmare cult ready and eager to loose them upon the world whenever another earthquake shall heave their monstrous stone city again to the sun and air.
~
The Call of Cthulhu
by
H. P. Lovecraft
They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky.
~
The Call of Cthulhu
by
H. P. Lovecraft
It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.
~
The Call of Cthulhu
by
H. P. Lovecraft
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
~
The Fellowship of the Ring
by
J. R. R. Tolkien
For a moment he paused there, the wind blowing his long grey locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud.
~
The Canterville Ghost
by
Oscar Wilde
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore,— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
~
The Raven
by
Edgar Allan Poe
I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes.
~
Great Expectations
by
Charles Dickens
"I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon."
~
Barnaby Rudge
by
Charles Dickens
Above the rumbling in the chimney, and the fast pattering on the glass, was heard a wailing, rushing sound, which shook the walls as though a giant's hand were on them; then a hoarse roar as if the sea had risen; then such a whirl and tumult that the air seemed mad; and then, with a lengthened howl, the waves of wind swept on, and left a moment's interval of rest.
~
Barnaby Rudge
by
Charles Dickens