The White People and Other Weird Stories Quotes

“I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories

“And he drank, and the more he drank the more he longed to drink, because the wine was enchanted.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories

“So, day after day, he lived in the grey phantasmal world, akin to death, that has, somehow, with most of us, made good its claim to be called life.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories

“Mary kept down the housekeeping bills to the very best of her ability, but meat was always dear, and she suspected the maid of cutting surreptitious slices from the joint and eating them in her bedroom with bread and treacle in the dead of night, for the girl had disordered and eccentric appetites.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories

“As I glanced up I had looked straight towards the last house in the row before me, and in an upper window of that house I had seen for some short fraction of a second a face. It was the face of a woman, and yet it was not human.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories

“The dichotomy between sexuality and spirituality can only take root in countries founded on puritanical principles—countries that cannot laugh at the Devil because they would be mocking God, too.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories

“Sorcery and sanctity, these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy of withdrawal from common life.”
― Arthur Machen, The White People and Other Weird Stories