Top 81 H. Rider Haggard Quotes
#1. When we love most, and love happily, then we are at our topmost bent, and soar further above the earth than anything else can carry us.
H. Rider Haggard
#2. 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
#4. When is truth pleasing? It is only when we clothe it's nakedness with rags of imagination, or sweeten it with fiction, that it can please.
H. Rider Haggard
#5. It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.
H. Rider Haggard
#6. 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
#7. Mistrust all men, and slay him whom thou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them, for they are evil, and in the end will destroy thee.
H. Rider Haggard
#8. It is awkward to listen to oneself being praised, and I was always a shy man.
H. Rider Haggard
#9. Wealth is good, and if it comes our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth.
H. Rider Haggard
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. Thus the husband is buried at Memphis and the wife in Koptos, yet the Ka of the wife goes to live in her husband's tomb
H. Rider Haggard
#13. What a tricky and uncomfortable thing is conscience, that nearly always begins to trouble us at the moment of, or after, the event, not before, when it might be of some use.
H. Rider Haggard
#14. How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always the most simple and kindly. It is from you half-and-half sort of people that you get pomposity and vulgarity
H. Rider Haggard
#15. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.
H. Rider Haggard
#16. 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
#18. A sharp spear," runs the Kukuana saying, "needs no polish.
H. Rider Haggard
#19. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and overweight our feeble reason till it fell, and we were drowned in the depths of our own vanity.
H. Rider Haggard
#20. am that Messenger whom men from the beginning have called Kepher," he said. "I am the Dweller in the wilderness whom your fathers knew, and your sons shall know. I am he who seeks for charity and pays it back in
H. Rider Haggard
#21. 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
#22. For women bring trouble as surely as night follows day ...
H. Rider Haggard
#23. Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!
H. Rider Haggard
#25. 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
#26. The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim to them.
H. Rider Haggard
#27. Take what life can give you, Ana, and do not trouble about the offerings which are laid in the tombs for time to crumble.
H. Rider Haggard
#28. There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.
H. Rider Haggard
#29. For surely 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 chew it. (Ayesha)
H. Rider Haggard
#30. Vengeance is an arrow that in falling oft pierces him who shot it
H. Rider Haggard
#31. Passion is like the lightening, it is beautiful and it links the earth to heaven, but it blinds.
H. Rider Haggard
#32. Then there came a vision to me, a vision that was sent in answer to my prayer, or, perchance, it was a madness born of my sorrows.
H. Rider Haggard
#33. And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the impersonal but, to my mind, rather awesome title of She.
H. Rider Haggard
#34. Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.
H. Rider Haggard
#35. 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?
H. Rider Haggard
#36. I have noted that those who desire to do the most good often work the greatest harm.
H. Rider Haggard
#37. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir's big toe in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him to put on another, saying that a "white one" would do at a pinch.
H. Rider Haggard
#38. Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.
H. Rider Haggard
#39. For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.
H. Rider Haggard
#40. Everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it.
H. Rider Haggard
#41. How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?
H. Rider Haggard
#42. Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.
H. Rider Haggard
#43. The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are for sale to whom who bids the highest in the currency of our desires.
H. Rider Haggard
#44. Shot the man! Shed human blood! Hid in a pool!" ejaculated Mr. Dove, overcome. "Really, Rachel, you are a most trying daughter. Why should you go out before daybreak and do such things?
H. Rider Haggard
#45. Shall a man
grave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them on
the water? Nay, oh /She/, I will live my day, and grow old with my
generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten.
H. Rider Haggard
#46. Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and height of a naval officer's objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated himself.
H. Rider Haggard
#47. Adventurer: he that goes to meet whatever may come. Well, that is what we all do in the world one way or another ...
H. Rider Haggard
#48. Women love the last blow as well as the last word, and when they fight for love they are pitiless as a wounded buffalo.
H. Rider Haggard
#49. 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
#50. Now, I whispered. Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir Henry's elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart.
H. Rider Haggard
#51. Young sir, this merchant is in the right, and whatever his trade may be, his blood is as good as your own. After your brave words, either you should fight him or take back the blow you gave. Then he leaned down
H. Rider Haggard
#53. Although I know no actual precedent for it, in the case of a particularly powerful Double, such as was given in this romance to Queen
H. Rider Haggard
#54. Surely,' I said, 'you don't think that you are going to die because you dreamed you saw your old father; if one dies because one dreams of one's father, what happens to a man who dreams of his mother-in-law?
H. Rider Haggard
#55. For however deep the fall from righteousness, if but repentance holds the heart, there is a path - a stony and a cruel path - whereby the height may be climbed again.
H. Rider Haggard
#56. My death is very near to me, and of this I am glad, for I desire to pursue the quest in other realms, as it has been promised to me that I shall do.
H. Rider Haggard
#57. 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
#58. I fancy I only got a rap on the head, which knocked me stupid.
H. Rider Haggard
#59. Curse it!" said Good - for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using strong language when excited - contracted, no doubt, in the course of his nautical career; "curse it! I've killed him.
H. Rider Haggard
#60. There is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them.
H. Rider Haggard
#62. The flesh dies, or at least it changes, and its passions pass, but that other passion of the spirit - that longing for oneness - is undying as itself.
H. Rider Haggard
#63. Love her who is present, for be sure she who is absent is false to thee;
H. Rider Haggard
#64. To the young, indeed, death is sometimes welcome, for the young can feel. They love and suffer, and it wrings them to see their beloved pass into the land of shadows.
H. Rider Haggard
#65. The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late
H. Rider Haggard
#66. Be careful when power comes to thee also, lest thou too shouldst smite in thine anger or thy jealousy, for unconquerable strength is a sore weapon in the hands of erring man
H. Rider Haggard
#67. For deep love unsatisfied is the hell of noble hearts and a portion of the accursed, but love that is mirrored back more perfect from the soul of our desired doth fashion wings to lift us above ourselves, and makes us what we might be.
H. Rider Haggard
#68. There are things and there are faces which, when felt or seen for the first time, stamp themselves upon the mind like a sun image on a sensitized plate and there remain unalterably fixed.
H. Rider Haggard
#69. And it is, by the way, from the presence of others that we really derive support in our dark hours of grief, and not from their talk, which often only serves to irritate us.
H. Rider Haggard
#71. The Garden of Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.
H. Rider Haggard
#72. So they crucified their Messiah? Well can I believe it. That He was a Son of the Living Spirit would be naught to them, if indeed He was so ... They would care little for any God if he came not with pomp and power.
H. Rider Haggard
#73. Well, it is not a good world
nobody can say that it is, save those who wilfully blind themselves to facts. How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star? The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that there should be any good left in it.
H. Rider Haggard
#75. When will man learn what was taught to him of old, that faith is the only plank wherewith he can float upon this sea and that his miserable works avail him nothing.
H. Rider Haggard
#76. Heretofore my life has been calm as a summer's day; but who knows when winter storms may rise, and often I have thought that I was born to know wind and rain and lightning as well as peace and sunshine.
H. Rider Haggard
#77. 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.
H. Rider Haggard
#78. I am glad to see that you have enough imagination not to be altogether a fool ... Yes, it is want of imagination that makes people fools; they won't believe what they can't understand.
H. Rider Haggard
#79. 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
#80. I have never observed that the religious are more eager to die than the rest of us poor mortals.
H. Rider Haggard
#81. But what is done is done. Who can make the dead tree green, or gaze again upon last year's light? Who can recall the spoken word, or bring back the spirit of the fallen? That which Time swallows comes not up again. Let it be forgotten!
H. Rider Haggard
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