H. Rider Haggard Quotes

The shaft of my vengeance fell upon my own head.

[T]he 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.

. . . when lost in a forest every path that may lead to safety should be explored

The world is very old and there have been peoples in it of whom we have heard nothing

We white people think that we know everything.

Never before was there such a sudden disrobement of an ecclesiastical dignitary draped in all his trappings.

Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.

It is what is in a man that matters . . . not what he looks like outside, as women often used to say to me when I was young

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.

But what of names, which often enough mean nothing at all?

. . . what a man believes is true for him and will certainly befall. If it were otherwise, what is the use of faith which in a thousand forms supports our race and holds it from the horrors of the Pit? Only those who believe nothing inherit what they believe—nothing

Fire may be lovely and attractive, also comforting at a proper distance, but he who sits on the top of it is cremated, as many a moth has found.

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

Then he went off to bed.

. . . those who worship the Black One [i.e. the Devil], at last the Black One takes by the throat.