Top 15 H. Rider Haggard Quotes

Then he went off to bed.

. . . they [the Walloos] are but the rotting stump of a tree that once was tall and fair. The dust of Time hides many such stumps . . . But what of that? Other fine trees are growing which also will become stumps in their season, and so on for ever.

. . . little in the world is pretty, except the world itself.

when men seek a god . . . they make one like themselves, only larger, uglier, and more evil . . . Also, often they say that this god was once their king, since at the bottom all worship their ancestors who gave them life, if they worship anything at all, and often, too, because they gave them life, they think that they must have been devils. Great ancestors were the first gods . . . and if they had not been evil they would never have been great. Look at Chaka, the Lion of the Zulus. He is called great because he was so wicked and cruel, and so it was and is with others if they succeed, though, if they fail, men speak otherwise of them.

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

Is it not so with many of the gods men set up? They are not and never were, but their priests are and shake the spear of power and pierce the hearts of men with terrors. What, then, does it matter about the gods whom no man sees, when the priest is there shaking the spear of power and piercing the hearts of their worshippers? The god is the priest or the priest is the god—have it which way you like

Life is more than gold . . . and great honour is better than both.

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

. . . the devil never dies

. . . now and again it is wise to cease from being wise, lest Heaven should grow jealous of our wisdom and want to share it.

. . . I thought I saw the mind of Providence acting through Hans. Yes, the cunning of the Hottentot had been used by the Powers above to sweep from the earth a vile tyranny and to destroy a blood-soaked idol and its worshippers.

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

. . . disillusionment is often painful, you know

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

You may all have noticed that however piously disposed, there is a point at which the majority of women become very practical indeed.