96 Interesting Quotes By Robert E. Howard
Regarded as the ‘Father of the Sword and Sorcery genre’, Robert Ervin Howard was an iconic American short story writer, poet, and novelist. He was famous for creating the iconic character, ‘Conan the Barbarian’, whose cultural impact is still measured along the likes of icons such as Batman, James Bond, Tarzan, and Sherlock Holmes. His other notable works include Solomon Kane (series), The Hour of the Dragon, Worms of the Earth and Pigeons from Hell. Majority of Howard’s works made their way into the theatres, with stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jason Momoa playing them. Conan the barbarian also found its way into the digital spectrum with computer games and comic books. Even though he had a short life span, he will forever be etched in the memory, for creating a brand new action sub genre of ‘Sword and Sorcery’. Howard’s thoughts and philosophies inspired many writes such as David Gemmell, Matthew Woodring Stover and Charles R. Saunders. We have collected some of his famous quotes from his writings, stories, characters etc. Here are some of the greatest quotes from this pulp fiction writer.
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I see not beyond death. ... Let me live while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. ... I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less than an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.
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.
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.
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?
Break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.
Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.
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.
One man's bane is another's bliss.
Any but the most brutish of men must be touched with a certain awe or wonder at the baring of a woman's naked soul.
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.
What is death but a traversing of eternities and a crossing of cosmic oceans?
Man can be that which he wishes to be; form and substance, they are but shadows. The mind, the ego, the essence of the god-dream -- that is real, that is immortal.
If I was wealthy I'd never do anything but poke around in ruined cities all over the world - and probably get snake-bit.
There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester's bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.
Man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes.
I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Before the invader sound was born, the Universe was silent and shall be again.
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.
Civilization is a network and a maze of precedences and custom.
Some mechanism in my sub-consciousness took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers, and honest workmen I had come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian.
Never the less, at the age of fifteen, having never seen a writer, a poet, a publisher or a magazine editor, and having only the vaguest ideas of procedure, I began working on the profession I had chosen.
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.
Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.
Rome got some peachy pastings when she tried to lick the Irish.
I'll say one thing about an oil boom; it will teach a kid that Life's a pretty rotten thing as quick as anything I can think of.
