H. Rider Haggard Quotes

The truth is that we fear to die because all the religions are full of uncomfortable hints as to what may happen to us afterwards as a reward for our deviations from their laws and we half believe in something . . . For very few inhabitants of this earth can attain either to complete belief or to its absolute opposite. They can seldom lay their hands upon their hearts, and say that they know that they will live for ever, or sleep for ever; there remains in the case of most honest men an element of doubt in either hypothesis.

. . . is [it] better to be alive or dead[?] The religious plump for the latter, though I have never observed that the religious are more eager to die than the rest of us poor mortals.

The shaft of my vengeance fell upon my own head.

Those who go secretly, go evilly; and foul birds love to fly at night.

Love counts not its labour nor can it weigh its tenderness in the scale of purchase. That which it has it gives, and craves for more to give and give, till the soul's infinity be drained.

How strange a thing is a love of woman, that is so small in the beginning and in its ends so great! (...) For when the Invisible conceived the order of universe He set this seed of woman's love within its plan, that by its most unequal growth is doomed to bring about equality of law. For now it lifts the low to heights untold, and now it brings the noble to the level of the dust. And thus, while Woman, this great surprise of Nature, is, Good and Evil can never grow apart.

For what man is there who does not prize that gift most rare and beautiful, that one perfect thing which no gold can buy – a woman's unfeigned love?

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

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

How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always the most simple and kindly. It is in your half-and-half sort of people that you find pompousness and vulgarity.

[T]he law of England is much more severe upon offences against property than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion is money.

Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.

[I]n all essentials the savage and the child of civilization are identical.

The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late—it does not matter when, in the end it crushes us all.

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