John Cowper Powys Quotes

Wolf’s wits, moving now, in spite of the fumes of smoke and alcohol, with restored clarity, achieved a momentous orientation of many obscure matters.

Life seemed entirely composed of weeping faces, old men sneaking up bedroom-stairs, tombstones with spittle trickling down, and black-edged calling-cards. He felt as if the First Cause of the Universe were a small, malignant grub, radiating a deadly blight in withering, centrifugal air-waves!

Different from all other essences in the world the smell of primroses has a sweetness that is faint and tremulous, and yet possesses a sort of tragic intensity. There exists in this flower, its soft petals, its cool, crinkled leaves, its pinkish stalk that breaks at a touch, something which seems able to pour its whole self into the scent it flings on the air. Other flowers have petals that are fragrant. The primrose has something more than that. The primrose throws its very life into this essence of itself which travels upon the air.

My dear Henry
I've just written to you over the air, but this will have to go by land & sea, never mind! Our peculiar link as two lost re-incarnated Atlanteans meeting again after escaping from the flood in opposite directions will not be broken either by air travel or land & sea travel!

I read a Russian book once, Barter, by that man whose name begins with D, and a character there says he believes in God but rejects God's World. Now I feel just the opposite! I think the whole of God's World is infinitely to be pitied — tortured and torturers alike — but I think that God Himself, the great Living God, responsible for it all, the powerful Creator who deliberately gave such reptiles, such sharks, such hyænas, such jackals as we are, this accursed gift of Free Will, ought to have such a Cancer

More delicately, more intricately fashioned than any grasses of the field, more subtle in texture than any seaweed of the sea, more thickly woven, and with a sort of intimate passionate patience, by the creative spirit within it, than any forest leaves or any lichen upon any tree trunk, this sacred moss of Somersetshire would remain as a perfectly satisfying symbol of life if all other vegetation were destroyed out of that country. There is a religious reticence in the nature of moss.

It's as if we were both digging into each other's soul to find a self that was put there before we were born.

He remembered to the end of his life what he felt at that moment, while the bone of his lower jaw met the bones of his knuckles pressed so hard against them. He felt absolutely alone – alone in an emptiness that was different from empty space. He did not pity himself. He did not hate himself. He just endured himself and waited – waited till whatever it was that enclosed him made some sign.

He thought to himself how, in some future time, when these formidable scientific inventions would have changed the face of the earth, some wayward philosopher like himself would still perhaps watch through a window a human head reading by candlelight, and find such a sight touching beyond words.

Thought is a real thing. It is a live thing. It creates; it destroys; it begets; it projects its living offspring. Like certain forms of physical pain thoughts can take organic shapes. They can live and grow and generate, independently of the person in whose being they originated.

Damn these indecisions! This accursed difficulty of deciding, of deciding anything at all, seemed to have grown into an obsession with him. To have to decide...that was the worst misery on earth!

Every human creature is a terror to every other human creature. Human minds are like unknown planets, encountering and colliding.

The grey sky had changed a little in character now. It was dimly interspersed with twinkling points of pale luminosity. Most of these points were so blurred and indistinct that it would have been hard to catch them again at a second glance in the same position in the vast ether. They were like nothing on earth; and to nothing on earth could they be compared. They were the stars, not of the night but of the twilight.

And yet he did genuinely love Cordelia. Not with any kind of physical love. That was impossible. But with a feeling of pity that shook the foundations of his nature.

as would keep him Alive and Howling for a Million Years!