Quotes by Robert E. Howard

“Sink white fangs in the throat of Life,Lap up the red that gushesIn the cold dark gloom of the bare black stones,In the gorge where the black wind rushes.Slink where the titan boulders poiseAnd the chasms grind thereunder,Over the mountains black and bareIn 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 godsWhere the dusk and the twilight sever;Under their iron goatish hoofsThey crunch our skulls forever.Mercy and hope and pity--all,Bubbles the black crags sunder;Hunger is all the gods have leftAnd the death that lurks thereunder.Glut mad fangs in the blood of LifeTo slake the thirst past sating,Before the blind worms mouth our bonesAnd the vulture's beak is grating.”

“Conan looked about him curiously. He had never before visited the temple of Asura, had not certainly known that there was such a temple in Tarantia. The priests of the religion had a habit of hiding their temples in a remarkable fashion. The worship of Mitra was overwhelmingly predominant in the Hyborian nations, but the cult of Asura persisted, in spite of official ban and popular antagonism. Conan had been told dark tales of hidden temples where intense smoke drifted up incessantly from black altars where kidnaped humans were sacrificed before a great coiled serpent, whose fearsome head swayed for ever in the haunted shadows.”

“The little poets sing of little things:Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings;Lovers who kissed and then were made as one,And modest flowers waving in the sun.The mighty poets write in blood and tearsAnd agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.They reach their mad blind hands into the night,To plumb abysses dead to human sight;To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled,Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world. MUSINGS [click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby]”

“The tall Khitan lifted his head and gazed at Publio, so that the merchant broke into a profuse sweat."What do you wish of me?" he stuttered."A ship," answered the Khitan. "A ship well manned for a long voyage.""For how long a voyage?" stammered Publio, never thinking of refusing."To the ends of the world, perhaps," answered the Khitan, "or to the molten seas of hell that lie beyond the sunrise.”

“Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph.”

“I am Solomon Kane.” The voice was resonant and powerful. “Are you prepared to meet your God?” “Why, Monsieur,” Le Loup answered, bowing, “I assure you I am as ready as I ever will be. I might ask Monsieur the same question.” “No doubt I stated my inquiry wrongly,” Kane said grimly. “I will change it: Are you prepared to meet your master, the Devil?”

“You left the fort before daybreak, I was told," he said to Conan. "I had begun to fear that the Picts had caught you at last." "When they smoke my head the whole river will know," grunted Conan. "They'll hear Pictish women wailing their dead as far as Velitrium—I was on a lone scout. I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing drums talking across the river.”

“The man slumped forward on the table. “Saints and devils!” raged the Wolf. “What does he look like, this Kane?” “Like – Satan –” The voice trailed off in silence. The dead man slid from the table to lie in a red heap upon the floor. “Like Satan!” babbled the other bandit. “I told you! 'Tis the Horned One himself! I tell you –”

“It is the individual mainly which draws me—the struggling, blundering, passionate insect vainly striving against the river of Life and seeking to divert the channel of events to suit himself—breaking his fangs on the iron collar of Fate and sinking into final defeat with the froth of a curse on his lips,”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 sellFor promise of valleys filled with gold, or threat of the Halls of Hell!”

“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.”

“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.”

“Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down, a hundred against one.”

“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.”

“It was passed on by the hook-nosed herdsmen of the grasslands, from the dwellers in tents to the dwellers in the squat stone cities where kings with curled blueblack beards worshipped round-bellied gods with curious rites.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You can not escape me!" he roared. "Lead me into a trap and I'll pile the heads of your kinsmen at your feet. Hide from me and I'll tear apart the mountains to find you! I'll follow you to hell and beyond hell!”

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind," the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. "Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”

“These things be deeds of some power of evil. The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time.”

“So Conan, glaring from under his tousled mane, saw the white naked figure of Natala writhing in the lustful grasp of a black nightmare shape that could have only been bred in the lost pits of hell. The”

“Nay, alone I am a weak creature, having no strength or might in me; yet in times past hath God made me a great vessel of wrath and a sword of deliverance. And I trust, shall do so again.”

“It was made from the black lotus, whose blossoms wave in the lost jungles of Khitai, where only the yellow-skulled priests of Yun dwell. Those blossoms strike dead any who smell of them.”

“Springing back, sword high, he saw the horror strike the floor, wheel and scuttle toward him with appalling speed – a gigantic black spider, such as men see only in nightmare dreams.”

“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”

“Then, since all great poets are strange in their speech and actions, he must have achieved great fame, for his actions and conversations were the strangest of any man I ever knew.”

“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.”

“Por que la única arma del hombre es ese coraje que no retrocede ni ante las mismisimas puertas del Infierno y ante el cual nada pueden ni siquiera las legiones infernales.”

“Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future.”

“But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path....”

“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”

“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.”

“He was like a tiger among baboons as he leaped, side-stepped and spun, offering an ever-moving target, while his ax wove a shining wheel of death about him. For”

“The thing was not a human — it could not be; it was a growth of Life from the pits of blasphemous creation — a perversion of evolutionary development. The”

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

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Well, let's go. If the people in that city are going to cut our throats they may as well do it now, before the heat of the day begins.”

“But folk who have tasted of death are only partly alive. In the dark corners of their souls and minds, death still lurks unconquered.”

“That's the way with civilized men. When they can't explain something by their half-baked science, they refuse to believe it.”

“If I was wealthy I'd never do anything but poke around in ruined cities all over the world - and probably get snake-bit.”

“I don't believe I ever saw an Oklahoman who wouldn't fight at the drop of a hat -- and frequently drop the hat himself.”

“Someday, when all your civilization and science are likewise swept away, your kind will pray for a man with a sword.”

“When I cannot stand alone, it will be time to die," he mumbled, through mashed lips. "But I'd like a flagon of wine.”

“How can I wear the harness of toilAnd sweat at the daily round,While in my soul foreverThe drums of Pictdom sound?”

“I am a landless man...I come out of the sunset and into the sunrise I go, wherever the Lord doth guide my feet.”

“I have come to believe that mankind eternally hovers on the brinks of secret oceans of which it knows nothing.”

“He was no defensive fighter; even in the teeth of overwhelming odds he always carried the war to the enemy.”

“the mere fact of a black figure racing across the landscape carrying a white captive was bizarre enough,”

“They take little interest in waking life, choosing to lie most of the time in death-like sleep.” “Then”

“You black dog!” A red mist of fury swept across Conan’s eyes. “Were I free I’d give you a broken back!”

“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.”

“Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn.”

“Suddenly the black torturer laid down the pipes and rose, towering over the writhing white figure.”

“Kothian culture and religion had suffered from a subtle admix ture of Shemite and Stygian strains.”

“The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!”

“But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.”

“When you allow the elevation of a man, one can be sure that you'll profit by his advancement.”

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

“A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.”

“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply.”

“There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage,” answered the Cimmerian”

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

“Lift that scimitar against me, you Hyrkanian pig and I'll gut you where you stand!”

“you civilized men are soft; your lives are not nailed to your spines as are ours”

“A true fanatic, his promptings were reasons enough for his actions.”

“When the oceans drown the world, women will take time for jealousy.”

“Damned be the dark ends of the earth where old horrors live again.”

“It is only the promise of death that makes life worth living.”

“I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, & am content.”

“Well, I like a good hater. But that can wait.”

“Let him make rimes for the vultures.”

“By this axe I rule!”