Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
d19aeac	Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.	death forget forgetting immortality life live-forever mortality sleep	H. Rider Haggard
6b4c3e6	The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and the advent of the dawn declared itself in the newborn blue of heaven. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her troubling, as in our tempes..	dusk heavens horizon life mist moon night observation place sea setting stars sunrise sunset	H. Rider Haggard
07628cd	Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?	foolishness futility humanity intelligence knowledge learning mankind stupidity wisdom	H. Rider Haggard
12d1771	Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.	ego helplessness perception thinking thought	H. Rider Haggard
56288bc	It is far. But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross; save a mountain and a a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he holds his life in his hand counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or to lose it as Providence may order.	love perseverance providence quest	H. Rider Haggard
14a9561	There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.	magic magic-vs-nature magic-vs-science nature power science	H. Rider Haggard
94b65c5	Memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.	living living-on sorrow waiting	H. Rider Haggard
f0f0ca5	Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of eac..	cause-and-effect chain-of-events chance change choice circumstance crime fate free-will good-and-evil intention long-term opposites result results time	H. Rider Haggard
fc14fa5	It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.	amorality corruption cynicism growing-old hopelessness immorality morality	H. Rider Haggard
0046a34	And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been.	death life love lovers mortality	H. Rider Haggard
bc7fb58	Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely ..	ghosts	H. Rider Haggard
7db378a	How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?	power	H. Rider Haggard
edb4468	That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught. Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.	circle-of-life death immortality life mortality	H. Rider Haggard
5e65bbd	Women love the last blow as well as the last word, and when they fight for love they are pitiless as a wounded buffalo.	women	H. Rider Haggard
b2287e1	Mistrust all men, and slay him whom thou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them, for they are evil, and in the end will destroy thee.		H. Rider Haggard
a0365ac	Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.	fallen-nations futility inevitability knowledge learning man mankind materialism nations passing-of-time time	H. Rider Haggard
1ad9d77	Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.		H. Rider Haggard
6ff64b9	It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way.		H. Rider Haggard
3110291	For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.	compliments reliability steadfastness virtue	H. Rider Haggard
e8d4510	Though the face before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than thirty years, in perfect health and the first flush of ripened beauty, yet it bore stamped upon it a seal of unutterable experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not even the slow smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide the shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the light of those glorious eyes, it was present in the air..	beauty goddess immortality life sorrow	H. Rider Haggard
8ee5af5	And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.	endeavors greed humanity ladder learning life mankind materialism things-that-matter want	H. Rider Haggard
dd4df5b	We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes.	cost crime give-and-take good-and-evil humanity mankind price sin society survival triumph	H. Rider Haggard
c3c886c	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.	inspirational life	H. Rider Haggard
0495200	Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and these many-coloured pigments of the imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them tallies with another!	disagreement dreams faith future hopes ignorance illusions imagination mankind religion vain-hopes	H. Rider Haggard
604a23f	And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the impersonal but, to my mind, rather awesome title of She.	women	H. Rider Haggard
f63b423	Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.		H. Rider Haggard
09435ba	Passion is like the lightening, it is beautiful and it links the earth to heaven, but it blinds.	passion	H. Rider Haggard
6dd7dc1	The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim to them.		H. Rider Haggard
ae8d537	for women bring trouble as surely as night follows day...		H. Rider Haggard
ff48e94	Think then what it is to live on here eternally and yet be human; to age in soul and see our beloved die and pass to lands whither we may not hope to follow; to wait while drop by drop the curse of the long centuries falls upon our imperishable being, like water slow dripping on a diamond that it cannot wear, till they be born anew forgetful of us, and again sink from our helpless arms into the void unknowable.		H. Rider Haggard
caefaf9	Surely,' I said, 'you don't think that you are going to die because you dreamed you saw your old father; if one dies because one dreams of one's father, what happens to a man who dreams of his mother-in-law?	mother-in-law	H. Rider Haggard
7c80c67	The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are for sale to whom who bids the highest in the currency of our desires.		H. Rider Haggard
5da572f	How true is the saying that the very highest in rank are always the most simple and kindly. It is from you half-and-half sort of people that you get pomposity and vulgarity	true vulgarity	H. Rider Haggard
bc96e89	Shall a man grave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them on the water? Nay, oh /She/, I will live my day, and grow old with my generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten.	immortality mortality	H. Rider Haggard
b03420c	For deep love unsatisfied is the hell of noble hearts and a portion of the accursed, but love that is mirrored back more perfect from the soul of our desired doth fashion wings to lift us above ourselves, and makes us what we might be.		H. Rider Haggard
414a1dd	To the young, indeed, death is sometimes welcome, for the young can feel. They love and suffer, and it wrings them to see their beloved pass into the land of shadows.		H. Rider Haggard
9d1687b	for surely 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 chew it. (Ayesha)		H. Rider Haggard
87dc1ab	T]he mind wearies easily when it strives to grapple with the Infinite, and to trace the footsteps of the Almighty as he strides from sphere to sphere, or deduce his purpose from his works. Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and overweight our feeble reason till it fell, and we were drowned in th..		H. Rider Haggard
99e76de	Let him who reads forgive the intrusion of a dream into a history of fact. But it came so home to me--I saw it all so clear in a moment, as it were; and, besides, who shall say what proportion of fact, past, present, or to come, may lie in the imagination? What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul's thought.		H. Rider Haggard
2ef907e	We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.		H. Rider Haggard
49d5d3b	A sharp spear," runs the Kukuana saying, "needs no polish."		H. Rider Haggard
ff04848	Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely ..		H. Rider Haggard
24651d3	Then there came a vision to me, a vision that was sent in answer to my prayer, or, perchance, it was a madness born of my sorrows.		H. Rider Haggard
75ae4d5	It is a curious thing that at my age -- fifty-five last birthday -- I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning my living as a trader in the ..		H. Rider Haggard

Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.

death forget forgetting immortality life live-forever mortality sleep

H. Rider Haggard

6b4c3e6

The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared. Soon, however, they too began to pale before a splendour in the east, and the advent of the dawn declared itself in the newborn blue of heaven. Quieter and yet more quiet grew the sea, quiet as the soft mist that brooded on her bosom, and covered up her troubling, as in our tempes..

dusk heavens horizon life mist moon night observation place sea setting stars sunrise sunset

H. Rider Haggard

07628cd

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?

foolishness futility humanity intelligence knowledge learning mankind stupidity wisdom

H. Rider Haggard

12d1771

Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.

ego helplessness perception thinking thought

H. Rider Haggard

56288bc

It is far. But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross; save a mountain and a a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he holds his life in his hand counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or to lose it as Providence may order.

love perseverance providence quest

H. Rider Haggard

14a9561

There is no such things as magic, though there is such a thing as knowledge of the hidden ways of Nature.

magic magic-vs-nature magic-vs-science nature power science

H. Rider Haggard

94b65c5

Memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand--evil have I done, and with sorrow have I made acquaintance from age to age, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.

living living-on sorrow waiting

H. Rider Haggard

f0f0ca5

Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of eac..

cause-and-effect chain-of-events chance change choice circumstance crime fate free-will good-and-evil intention long-term opposites result results time

H. Rider Haggard

fc14fa5

It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption.

amorality corruption cynicism growing-old hopelessness immorality morality

H. Rider Haggard

0046a34

And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been.

death life love lovers mortality

H. Rider Haggard

bc7fb58

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely ..

ghosts

H. Rider Haggard

7db378a

How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?

power

H. Rider Haggard

edb4468

That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught. Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.

circle-of-life death immortality life mortality

H. Rider Haggard

5e65bbd

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

women

H. Rider Haggard

b2287e1

Mistrust all men, and slay him whom thou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them, for they are evil, and in the end will destroy thee.

H. Rider Haggard

a0365ac

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.

fallen-nations futility inevitability knowledge learning man mankind materialism nations passing-of-time time

H. Rider Haggard

1ad9d77

Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.

H. Rider Haggard

6ff64b9

It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way.

H. Rider Haggard

3110291

For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.

compliments reliability steadfastness virtue

H. Rider Haggard

e8d4510

Though the face before me was that of a young woman of certainly not more than thirty years, in perfect health and the first flush of ripened beauty, yet it bore stamped upon it a seal of unutterable experience, and of deep acquaintance with grief and passion. Not even the slow smile that crept about the dimples of her mouth could hide the shadow of sin and sorrow. It shone even in the light of those glorious eyes, it was present in the air..

beauty goddess immortality life sorrow

H. Rider Haggard

8ee5af5

And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.

endeavors greed humanity ladder learning life mankind materialism things-that-matter want

H. Rider Haggard

dd4df5b

We run to place and power over the dead bodies of those who fail and fall; ay, we win the food we eat from out the mouths of starving babes.

cost crime give-and-take good-and-evil humanity mankind price sin society survival triumph

H. Rider Haggard

c3c886c

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.

inspirational life

H. Rider Haggard

0495200

Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and these many-coloured pigments of the imagination! Strange, too, that no one of them tallies with another!

disagreement dreams faith future hopes ignorance illusions imagination mankind religion vain-hopes

H. Rider Haggard

604a23f

And now it appeared that there was a mysterious Queen clothed by rumour with dread and wonderful attributes, and commonly known by the impersonal but, to my mind, rather awesome title of She.

women

H. Rider Haggard

f63b423

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.

H. Rider Haggard

09435ba

Passion is like the lightening, it is beautiful and it links the earth to heaven, but it blinds.

passion

H. Rider Haggard

6dd7dc1

The unknown is generally taken to be terrible, not as the proverb would infer, from the inherent superstition of man, but because it so often is terrible. He who would tamper with the vast and secret forces that animate the world may well fall a victim to them.

H. Rider Haggard

ae8d537

for women bring trouble as surely as night follows day...

H. Rider Haggard

ff48e94

Think then what it is to live on here eternally and yet be human; to age in soul and see our beloved die and pass to lands whither we may not hope to follow; to wait while drop by drop the curse of the long centuries falls upon our imperishable being, like water slow dripping on a diamond that it cannot wear, till they be born anew forgetful of us, and again sink from our helpless arms into the void unknowable.

H. Rider Haggard

caefaf9

Surely,' I said, 'you don't think that you are going to die because you dreamed you saw your old father; if one dies because one dreams of one's father, what happens to a man who dreams of his mother-in-law?

mother-in-law

H. Rider Haggard

7c80c67

The world is a great mart, my Holly, where all things are for sale to whom who bids the highest in the currency of our desires.

H. Rider Haggard

5da572f

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

true vulgarity

H. Rider Haggard

bc96e89

Shall a man grave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them on the water? Nay, oh /She/, I will live my day, and grow old with my generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten.

immortality mortality

H. Rider Haggard

b03420c

For deep love unsatisfied is the hell of noble hearts and a portion of the accursed, but love that is mirrored back more perfect from the soul of our desired doth fashion wings to lift us above ourselves, and makes us what we might be.

H. Rider Haggard

414a1dd

To the young, indeed, death is sometimes welcome, for the young can feel. They love and suffer, and it wrings them to see their beloved pass into the land of shadows.

H. Rider Haggard

9d1687b

for surely 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 chew it. (Ayesha)

H. Rider Haggard

87dc1ab

T]he mind wearies easily when it strives to grapple with the Infinite, and to trace the footsteps of the Almighty as he strides from sphere to sphere, or deduce his purpose from his works. Such things are not for us to know. Knowledge is to the strong, and we are weak. Too much wisdom would perchance blind our imperfect sight, and too much strength would make us drunk, and overweight our feeble reason till it fell, and we were drowned in th..

H. Rider Haggard

99e76de

Let him who reads forgive the intrusion of a dream into a history of fact. But it came so home to me--I saw it all so clear in a moment, as it were; and, besides, who shall say what proportion of fact, past, present, or to come, may lie in the imagination? What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul's thought.

H. Rider Haggard

2ef907e

We were like confirmed opium-eaters: in our moments of reason we well knew the deadly nature of our pursuit, but we certainly were not prepared to abandon its terrible delights.

H. Rider Haggard

49d5d3b

A sharp spear," runs the Kukuana saying, "needs no polish."

H. Rider Haggard

ff04848

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely ..

H. Rider Haggard

24651d3

Then there came a vision to me, a vision that was sent in answer to my prayer, or, perchance, it was a madness born of my sorrows.

H. Rider Haggard

75ae4d5

It is a curious thing that at my age -- fifty-five last birthday -- I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning my living as a trader in the ..

H. Rider Haggard