H. Rider Haggard Quotes

60 Sourced Quotes

For he was a merciful man, who loved not slaughter, although his fierce faith drove him from war to war.

H. Rider Haggard
The sky aft was dark as pitch, but the moon still shone brightly ahead of us and lit up the blackness. Beneath its sheen a huge white-topped breaker, twenty feet high or more, was rushing on to us. It was on the break — the moon shone on its crest and tipped its foam with light. On it rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it.

H. Rider Haggard
Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.

H. Rider Haggard
How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?

H. Rider Haggard
After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go back to Natal.

H. Rider Haggard
Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.

H. Rider Haggard
We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes.

H. Rider Haggard
And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been.

H. Rider Haggard
The Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against me when my clock strikes.

H. Rider Haggard
At length the heralds and forerunners of the royal sun had done their work, and, searching out the shadows, had caused them to flee away. Then up he came in glory from his ocean-bed, and flooded the earth with warmth and light.

H. Rider Haggard
As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.

H. Rider Haggard
Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.

H. Rider Haggard
Laughter and bitterness are often the veils with which a sore heart wraps its weakness from the world.

H. Rider Haggard
Memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand — evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.

H. Rider Haggard
Hard is it to die, because our delicate flesh doth shrink back from the worm it will not feel, and from that unknown which the winding-sheet doth curtain from our view. But harder still, to my fancy, would it be to live on, green in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and feel that other secret worm of recollection gnawing ever at the heart.

H. Rider Haggard
Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath—all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?

H. Rider Haggard
Adventurer — he that goes out to meet whatever may come. Well, that is what we all do in the world one way or another.

H. Rider Haggard
We may taste of every turn of chance — now rule as Kings, now serve as Slaves; now love, now hate; now prosper, and now perish. But still, through all, we are the same; for this is the marvel of Identity.

H. Rider Haggard
Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and these many-coloured pigments of the imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them tallies with another!

H. Rider Haggard
Let them be brought to the house of 'She-who-must-be-obeyed'. Bring forth the men, and let that which they have with them be brought forth also.

H. Rider Haggard
It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way.

H. Rider Haggard
Men and women, empires and cities, thrones, principalities, and powers, mountains, rivers, and unfathomed seas, worlds, spaces, and universes, all have their day, and all must go.

H. Rider Haggard
Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours.

H. Rider Haggard
You lie; you always were a liar, and you always will be a liar.

H. Rider Haggard
There is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them.

H. Rider Haggard
As for the girl, since she is well favoured, she shall brew the king's beer, and be numbered amongst the king's wives-unless, indeed, he is pleased to give her to me.

H. Rider Haggard
Think then what it is to live on here eternally and yet be human; toage in soul and see our beloved die and pass to lands whither we maynot hope to follow; to wait while drop by drop the curse of the longcenturies falls upon our imperishable being, like water slow drippingon a diamond that it cannot wear, till they be born anew forgetful ofus, and again sink from our helpless arms into the void unknowable.

H. Rider Haggard
Ah! If man would but see that hope is from within and not from without - that he himself must work out his own salvation.

H. Rider Haggard
Now, after these things were done, the Pharaoh and his Queen drove through the hosts of Egypt in their golden chariot, and received the homage of the hosts ere they departed northwards for Thebes. At nightfall they returned again and sat side by side at the marriage feast, and once more Tua swept her harp of ivory and gold, and sang the ancient song of him who dared much for love, and won the prize.

H. Rider Haggard
We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.

H. Rider Haggard