Robert E. Howard Quotes

I heard from Truett that you fellows are forbidden the company of the girl you were going with. Thats a dirty shame. How come? I suppose its because you tried to act like gentlemen.

Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph

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.

How did you come to your crown, you and that black-faced pig beside you? Your fathers did the fighting and the suffering, and handed their crowns to you on golden platters. What you inherited without lifting a finger — except to poison a few brothers — I fought for. “You

All fled — all done, so lift me on the pyre — The Feast is over, and the lamps expire.

Youngsters of this generation seem not quite so hazardous except in the way of mechanical speed, bad liquor and venereal diseases.

… you speak of Venarium familiarly. Perhaps you were there?" "I was, grunted [Conan]. "I was one of the horde that swarmed over the hills. I hadn't yet seen fifteen snows, but already my name was repeated about the council fires.

Sink white fangs in the throat of Life,
Lap up the red that gushes
In the cold dark gloom of the bare black stones,
In the gorge where the black wind rushes.
Slink where the titan boulders poise
And the chasms grind thereunder,
Over the mountains black and bare
In the teeth of the brooding thunder.
Why should we wish for the fertile fields,
Valley and crystal fountain?
This is our doom — the hunger-trail,
The wolf and the storm-stalked mountain.
Over us stalk the bellowing gods
Where the dusk and the twilight sever;
Under their iron goatish hoofs
They crunch our skulls forever.
Mercy and hope and pity — all,
Bubbles the black crags sunder;
Hunger is all the gods have left
And the death that lurks thereunder.
Glut mad fangs in the blood of Life
To slake the thirst past sating,
Before the blind worms mouth our bones
And the vulture's beak is grating.

And he lifted his clenched fists above his head, and with glaring eyes raised and writhing lips flecked with froths, he cursed the sky and the earth and the spheres above and below. He cursed the cold stars, the blazing sun, the mocking moon and the whisper of the wind. He cursed all fates and destinies, all that he had loved or hated, the silent cities beneath the seas, the past ages and the future eons. In one soul-shaking burst of blasphemy he cursed the gods and devils who made mankind their sport, and he cursed Man who lives blindly on and blindly offers his back to the iron-hoofed feet of his gods.

The blare of the trumpets grew louder, like a deep golden tide surge, like the soft booming of the evening tides against the silver beaches of Valusia. The throng shouted, women flung roses from the roofs as the rhythmic chiming of silver hoofs came clearer and the first of the mighty array swung into view in the broad white street that curved round the golden-spired Tower of Splendor.

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

I saw that — that black thing squatting like an ape among the branches, leering down at me.

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.

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

Money and muscle, that’s what I want; to be able to do any damned thing I want and get away with it. Money won’t do that altogether, because if a man is a weakling, all the money in the world won’t enable him to soak an enemy himself; on the other hand, unless he has money he may not be able to get away with it.