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You may think this all strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.

— Arthur Machen The Great God Pan (1894)

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More quotes by Arthur Machen

We know what happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing.

The Great God Pan (1894)

There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these 'chases in Arras, dreams in a career,' beyond them all as beyond a veil.

The Great God Pan (1894)

He had the dreadful misfortune to be an intellectual, and to be born in the country.

The Hill of Dreams (1907)

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.

Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes.

All Arthur Machen quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Arthur Machen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.