H. Rider Haggard Quotes

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

That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught. Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.

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

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

There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.

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

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.

Everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it.

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.

Wealth is good, and if it comes our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth.

Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?

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?

A sharp spear needs no polish.

The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang.

It is not wise to neglect the present for the future, for who knows what the future will be?

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

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

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.

Women love the last blow as well as the last word, and when they fight for love they are pitiless as a wounded buffalo.

We white people think that we know everything.

The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late

The food that memory gives to eat is bitter to the taste, and it is only with the teeth of hope that we can bear to bite it.

Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.

Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.