76 Dark And Haunting Gothic Quotes For The Perfect Goth Aesthetic

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published November 7, 2023

Put some beauty in your life with these dark goth quotes.

What is goth?

Goth is an aesthetic, a style, but it can also be someone who finds beauty in things others consider dark.

Goth is for people who love the mysterious and dark nature of reality; this does not make them evil per se; it just means they have a different perspective and find joy in things others may not.

Goths are not sad people who lack humanity; instead, they find joy and humor in life in what is known as black comedy.

They are not unhappy because they think about dark things; they are happy because dark things inspire them.

The goth culture celebrates intelligence, romance, and artistry.

People inspired by goth culture are often free thinkers.

Check out our awesomely dark goth quotes and find inspiration in things you had not considered before.

Short Goth Quotes

1. “I had a gothic phase, and now I’m more edgy chic.” – Ashley Benson

2. “Your darkest secret can be someone else’s desired wish.” – Anonymous

3. “Before that, I wanted to be a magazine illustrator – I probably would have painted Gothic scenes.” – Ira Levin

4. “I’m not really into gothic music.” – Richard Fleeshman

5. “Ellie, would you frolic in the land of forever with me?” – Rae Hachton

6. “I have a, shall we say, morbid personality.” – Novala Takemoto

7. “She wondered if he kept a pair of calipers to measure his guests’ skulls.” – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

8. “Blood and oil. It’s on both our hands.” – Abigail C. Edwards

9. “Love destroys people. It’s emotional heroin.” – Benjamin Haymond

10. “Southern Gothic is alive and well. It’s not just a genre; it is a way of life.” — Greg Iles

Gothic Quotes about Cathedrals & Churches

Gothic cathedrals and churches are marvels of human craftsmanship.

11. “A Gothic church is a petrified religion.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12. “I wanted to keep a Gothic cathedral alive in my heart.” — Susan Vreeland

13. “The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

14. “Most buildings, whether they’re Gothic cathedrals or Romanesque ones, were high tech for their time.” — Richard Rogers

15. “I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.” — John McGahern

16. “These old ballparks are like cathedrals in America. We don’t have big old Gothic cathedrals like they do in Europe. But we got baseball parks.” — Jimmy Buffett

17. “But now I know that it is very important that all buildings should be consistent, that this is the quality of the Gothic cathedral, for instance, that we like.” — Minoru Yamasaki

18. “Yet for my part, deeply as I am moved by the religious architecture of the Middle Ages, I cannot honestly say that I ever felt the slightest emotion in any modern Gothic church.” — Goldwin Smith

19. “All the great works of art, the cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – are a luminous sign of God, and thus are truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.” — Pope Benedict XVI

20. “The lofty gothic ceiling arched far above my head, and through the stained windows, the light came but dimly – it was all still, solemn and religious.” — Bayard Taylor

Goth Quotes About Love

21. “Love destroys people. It’s emotional heroin. Not that I know much about shooting up.” – Benjamin Haymond

22. “What a pair we are, intrinsically broken but tied to one another by desire and death.” – Sylvia Day

23. “I have told you, reader, that I have learned to love Mr.Rochester. I could not unlove him now.” – Charlotte Brontë

24. “Love is a hole in the heart.” – Ben Hecht

25. “For me, black is not dark; it’s poetic. I don’t think of gothic I think of classic – it’s a big difference.” — Ann Demeulemeester

26. “Mine first –mine last– mine even in the grave!” – Louisa May Alcott

27. “Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.” – Simona Panova

28. “Everybody is equally weak on the inside, just that some present their ruins as new castles and become kings.” – Simona Panova

29. “I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.” – Jess C Scott

30. “When her mind was discomposed… a book was the opiate that lulled it to repose.” – Ann Radcliffe

Goth Quotes About Life

31. “Can there be a love which does not make demands on its object?” – Confucius

32. “I am drawn to Americana, and I am drawn to gothic stories, and I love American gothic stories.” ― Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

33. “I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful.” – Rae Hachton

34. “Can you look at this brilliant wound?” – Keishi Ando

35. “All good things in life are fragile and easily lost.” – Khaled Hosseini

36. “I don’t know what the opposite is of the Midas touch, but you shitbirds have it.” – Michael Zarocostas

37. “I wouldn’t consider myself Goth, but I love Gothic pieces.” – Tyson Chandler

38. “You see the world in colors; I see in Black and Red.” – Irum Zahra

39. “I was never able to accept anyone else’s support but my own.” – Simona Panova

40. “Here are some of the criteria I have used to decide what makes an equation great.” – Dana Mackenzie

Gothic Quotes About Gothic Literary Genres

41. “I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written, and I like vampires.” — Roddy Doyle

42. “One futuristic novel that had a huge impact on me was Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’ which is kind of science fiction plus Gothic.” — Jennifer Egan

43. “I like to spoof the original Gothic classics, so there is also a good dose of comedy in the ‘Parasol Protectorate’ – giggling readers are good.” — Gail Carriger

44. “I found ‘The Face Of Another’ by Kobo Abe disappointing despite the excellent, gothic premise: a man who’s terrible facial scarring leads him to create a perfect mask.” — Emma Healey

45. “‘Crimson’ is written in a very particular style, and it’s very precise in how it graduates into a gothic romance. The souls that will connect with it will connect deeply.” — Guillermo del Toro

46. “Preacher is a book that somehow allows me time by settling on its characters, that sort of modern gothic western feel. You’re not likely to see the boat veering too far from that.” — Garth Ennis

47. “Often in gothic novels, there’s a large house, an estate, and it’s symbolic of that culture. Usually, it’s sort of moldering or rotted or something, and sometimes it’s a whole community.” — Joyce Carol Oates

48. “The 1890s was perhaps the most Gothic decade ever: ‘Dracula,’ ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Time Machine,’ not to mention ‘Heart of Darkness’ and ‘The Interpretation of Dreams,’ were all written between 1890 and 1899.” — Mark Fisher

49. “I mean here, not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control.” — Joseph Brodsky

Goth Quotes About Beauty

50. “I hate the word gothic, but I would like to try doing something like that. A gothic sound, not rock, but gothic. There’s a difference.” – Kelly Osbourne

51. “I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer, the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.” – Amy Tan

52. “We have all heard, beauty is skin deep. I think beauty reaches to the soul. Friends like you for you, not for what you wear or what you drive. We all need to look for the beauty within.” – Mark Hook

53. “Physical beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but inner beauty is something that shines from inside, and no one can deny it.” – Nishan Panwar

54. “Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty – excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable -should persist after the beauty was gone.” – Aristotle

55. “Your outer beauty keeps distracting me, and your inner beauty keeps attracting me.” – Terry Mark

56. “Indeed, in every life, there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even after years of attempted healing.” – John O. Donohue

57. “Where woundedness can be refined into beauty, a wonderful transfiguration takes place.” – John O. Donohue

58. “Someone once told me, in all his infinite wisdom, beauty is only skin deep. I, of course, looked deeper, and found, where true beauty resides.” – Eric Nickel

Goth Quotes About Death

59. “It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom.” – Benjamin Britten

60. “Forget wishing; you’re missing the ambition of your mission.” – OutKast

61. “Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do.” – William Shakespeare

62. “If you are a dream, then it is one from which I do not ever wish to be woken.” – Kathryn Ann Kingsley

63. “The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.” – Benjamin Britten

64. “Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.” – Bernie Mcgill

65. “For the sake of your bright eyes, Jem Merlyn.” – Daphne du Maurier

66. “The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love.” – Benjamin Britten

67. “It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.” – John Green

68. “It was enough to drive me mad. I was no longer myself, and yet I was so much more me than I had ever been before.” – Katherine Demure

69. “My wife and I battle over home decor. My style goes from Gothic to Baroque. Hers is minimalist.” ― Joe Bastianich

70. “Seldom is a Gothic head more beautiful than when broken.” ― Andre Malraux

71. “Below are some quotations along these lines. Select a quote for your Gothic Myspace layout or contribute one of your own.” ― Laura Ramirez

72. “What the world needs right now… a good, artistic, gothic, terrifying scare.” ― Iggy Pop

73. “Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.” ― Kenneth Clark

74. “I love puffins. They are small, round gothic birds, and their babies are called pufflings.” ― Caitlin Moran

75. “As a kid, I was obsessed with myths and legends and the haunting beauty of gothic stories.” ― Nathan Parsons

76. “Adrianne Harun’s dark, mysterious novel is by turns Gothic and grittily realistic, astute and poetic in its evocation of evil everywhere.” ― Andrea Barrett