Henry Rider Haggard cytaty

„…Choć przedmiot uwielbienia niesie nam często zagładę, a miłość jest bardziej nieubłagana niźli śmierć, i chociaż z kolei rzeczy odpłacamy się za doznane nieszczęścia, to jednak nadal musimy uwielbiać i wyciągać ramiona ku utraconym pożądaniom i przelewać naszą krew na ołtarzu naszego zdegradowanego bóstwa. Albowiem miłość pochodzi z ducha i nie zna śmierci.”

Kleopatra (1889), Sentencje stylizowane na mądrości starożytne
Źródło: s. 256

„Ci, co sieją niespełna rozumu, żąć będą w ubolewaniu.”

Kleopatra (1889)
Źródło: s. 266

„Ci, co po kryjomu chodzą, chodzą złymi drogami. Tylko złe ptaki lubią fruwać po nocy.”

Kleopatra (1889), Sentencje stylizowane na mądrości starożytne
Źródło: s. 165

„Miłość nie liczy się z trudami… ani waży tkliwości na wadze handlarza. Daje z siebie wszystko, co ma, i stara się dać więcej, aż do wyczerpania niezmierzonych zasobów duszy.”

Kleopatra (1889), Sentencje stylizowane na mądrości starożytne
Źródło: s. 165

„Kruche są podstawy spraw, które opierają się na wierności kobiecej, bowiem kobiety tylko wówczas są wierne, kiedy kochają, a kiedy zaś kochają, niewiara staje się ich wiarą. Nie są stałe… Potrafią zajść wysoko i upaść jeszcze niżej. Są tak silne i zmienne jak morze.”

Kleopatra (1889)
Źródło: s. 178

„Cóż bowiem wart jest człowiek, który nie ceni nader rzadkiego i pięknego daru, owej jedynej doskonałej rzeczy, której nie można zdobyć za złoto, jaką jest szczera miłość kobiety?”

Kleopatra (1889)
Źródło: s. 85

„Kobieta dorosła powinna się obawiać dwóch rzeczy – małżeństwa i śmierci; a z dwojga złego małżeństwo jest gorsze, albowiem w śmierci możemy znaleźć odpocznienie, natomiast w złym małżeństwie znaleźć musimy jedynie piekło.”

Kleopatra (1889)
Źródło: s. 228

„Jakże dziwną rzeczą jest miłość kobiety, która w początkach swych jest tak mała i tak ogromna na końcu! (…) Albowiem kiedy Niewidzialny zamyślił zbudować początek wszechświata, zasadził to ziarno miłości kobiecej, iżby przez swój nierówny wzrost przyniosło światu równość prawa. Raz oto wynosi ona maluczkich na niezmierne wyżyny, to znowu możnych zrównuje z pyłem. I tak, dopóki istnieje kobieta – ta wielka niespodzianka natury – dobro i zło nie mogą wzrastać osobno.”

Kleopatra (1889)
Źródło: s. 173

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

Kleopatra (1889)
Źródło: s. 98

Henry Rider Haggard: Cytaty po angielsku

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

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka Kleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

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

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

Źródło: 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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka Kleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

“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?”

H. Rider Haggard książka 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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka Kleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

“I looked down the long lines of waving black plumes and stern faces beneath them, and sighed to think that within one short hour most, if not all, of those magnificent veteran warriors, not a man of whom was under forty years of age, would be laid dead or dying in the dust. It could not be otherwise; they were being condemned, with that wise recklessness of human life which marks the great general, and often saves his forces and attains his ends, to certain slaughter, in order to give their cause and the remainder of the army a chance of success. They were foredoomed to die, and they knew the truth. It was to be their task to engage regiment after regiment of Twala’s army on the narrow strip of green beneath us, till they were exterminated or till the wings found a favourable opportunity for their onslaught. And yet they never hesitated, nor could I detect a sign of fear upon the face of a single warrior. There they were—going to certain death, about to quit the blessed light of day for ever, and yet able to contemplate their doom without a tremor. Even at that moment I could not help contrasting their state of mind with my own, which was far from comfortable, and breathing a sigh of envy and admiration. Never before had I seen such an absolute devotion to the idea of duty, and such a complete indifference to its bitter fruits.”

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

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

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

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

H. Rider Haggard książka Kleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

“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.”

Dawn (1884), CHAPTER XXI

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

H. Rider Haggard książka She: A History of Adventure

She (1887), CHAPTER XVII, THE BALANCE TURNS

“We white people think that we know everything.”

H. Rider Haggard książka Allan and the Holy Flower

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

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka 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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka Kleopatra

Cleopatra (1889)

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

Źródło: 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

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

H. Rider Haggard książka Allan Quatermain

Allan Quatermain (1887), INTRODUCTION

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka The Ancient Allan

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

“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.”

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

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

H. Rider Haggard książka King Solomon's Mines

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

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

H. Rider Haggard książka The Brethren

The Brethren (1904), PROLOGUE