H. Rider Haggard Quotes

“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?”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 14, "The Last Stand of the Greys"

“I do not believe in violence; it is the last resort of fools.”

Cleopatra (1889)

“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.”

Dawn (1884), CHAPTER XXI

“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.”

Cleopatra (1889)

H. Rider Haggard book She: A History of Adventure

She (1887), CHAPTER XVII, THE BALANCE TURNS

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

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

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

H. Rider Haggard Quotes about love

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

Cleopatra (1889)

H. Rider Haggard book The Brethren

The Brethren (1904), PROLOGUE

“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.”

“It is easier to destroy knowledge, Ignosi, than to gather it.”

Cleopatra (1889)

H. Rider Haggard Quotes

“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.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 15, "Good Falls Sick"

“On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 1, "I Meet Sir Henry Curtis"

“The shaft of my vengeance fell upon my own head.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

“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.”

Cleopatra (1889)

H. Rider Haggard book Ayesha

Ayesha: The Return of She (1905), CHAPTER I, THE DOUBLE SIGN

“Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner…
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”

“It is awkward to listen to oneself being praised, and I was always a shy man.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

H. Rider Haggard book Allan and the Holy Flower

Allan and the Holy Flower (1915), CHAPTER I, BROTHER JOHN

“We white people think that we know everything.”

H. Rider Haggard book Child of Storm

Child of Storm (1913), CHAPTER I, ALLAN QUATERMAIN HEARS OF MAMEENA

“There is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them.”

“I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly.”

A Tale of Three Lions (1887), CHAPTER I, THE INTEREST ON TEN SHILLINGS

“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.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 16, "The Place of Death"

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

Colonel Quaritch, V. C.: A Tale of Country Life (1888), CHAPTER I, HAROLD QUARITCH MEDITATES

H. Rider Haggard book Allan Quatermain

Allan Quatermain (1887), INTRODUCTION

“I have never observed that the religious are more eager to die than the rest of us poor mortals.”

H. Rider Haggard book The Ancient Allan

The Ancient Allan (1920), CHAPTER I, OLD FRIEND

“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.”

“Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 18, "We Abandon Hope"

“You lie; you always were a liar, and you always will be a liar.”

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 15, "Good Falls Sick"