He was concerned only with the naked fundamentals of life…

He was concerned only with the naked fundamentals of life. The warm intimacies of small, kindly things, the sentiments and delicious trivialities that make up so much of civilized men’s lives were meaningless to him. A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs. Bloodshed and violence and savagery were the natural elements of the life Conan knew; he could not, and would never, understand the little things that are so dear to civilized men and women.

Sourced, “Beyond the Black River
” (1935)

Other Robert E. Howard Quotes

Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race; but to a black man gold can never pay for blood. - View Quote Details on Aye, you white dog, you are like all your race;…
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“I…
I cannot believe in a paradise
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But I can vision a Hell of flame
For I have lived on earth. - View Quote Details on I cannot believe in a paradise
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The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race… - View Quote Details on The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting…
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[The] chief [of the gods of Cimmeria] is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall men ask of the gods?… There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people. In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity. - View Quote Details on [The] chief [of the gods of Cimmeria] is Crom. He…
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Conan sensed their uncertainty and grinned mirthlessly and ferociously. “Who dies first?” - View Quote Details on Conan sensed their uncertainty and grinned mirthlessly and ferociously. “Who…