Top 90 H. Rider Haggard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Adventurer: he that goes to meet whatever may come. Well, that is what we all do in the world one way or another...”

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

3. “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

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

— H. Rider Haggard

5. “Passion is like the lightning, it is beautiful, and it links the earth to heaven, but alas it blinds!”

— H. Rider Haggard

6. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

8. “Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.”

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

13. “But what is done is done. Who can make the dead tree green, or gaze again upon last year’s light? Who can recall the spoken word, or bring back the spirit of the fallen? That which Time swallows comes not up again. Let it be forgotten!”

— H. Rider Haggard

14. “We white people think that we know everything.”

— H. Rider Haggard

15. “Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without – that he himself must work out his own salvation! He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him. Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it.”

— H. Rider Haggard

16. “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

17. “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

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

— H. Rider Haggard

19. “A sharp spear needs no polish.”

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

21. “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

22. “Fare you well, my brother! Death is good! Thus, indeed, I would die, for I have made me a mat of men to lie on,” he cried with a great voice.”

— H. Rider Haggard

23. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

24. “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

25. “As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.”

— H. Rider Haggard

26. “We may taste of every turn of chance – now rule as Kings, now serve as Slaves; now love, now hate; now prosper, and now perish. But still, through all, we are the same; for this is the marvel of Identity.”

— H. Rider Haggard

27. “My empire is of the imagination.”

— H. Rider Haggard

28. “Wealth is good, and if it comes our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth.”

— H. Rider Haggard

29. “The Garden of Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.”

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

31. “Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir’s big toe in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him to put on another, saying that a “white one” would do at a pinch.”

— H. Rider Haggard

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

— H. Rider Haggard

33. “As for the girl, since she is well favoured, she shall brew the king’s beer, and be numbered amongst the king’s wives-unless, indeed, he is pleased to give her to me.”

— H. Rider Haggard

34. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

35. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

36. “It is curious to look back and realize upon what trivial and apparently coincidental circumstances great events frequently turn as easily and naturally as a door on its hinges.”

— H. Rider Haggard

37. “What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul’s thought.”

— H. Rider Haggard

38. “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?”

— H. Rider Haggard

39. “It is not wise to neglect the present for the future, for who knows what the future will be?”

— H. Rider Haggard

40. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

41. “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.” “You are a strange man,” said Sir Henry, when he had ceased. Umbopa laughed. “It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu. Perhaps I seek a brother over the mountains.”

— H. Rider Haggard

42. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

43. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

44. “Men and women, empires and cities, thrones, principalities, and powers, mountains, rivers, and unfathomed seas, worlds, spaces, and universes, all have their day, and all must go.”

— H. Rider Haggard

45. “There are two things in the world, as I have found out, which cannot be prevented: you cannot keep a Zulu from fighting, or a sailor from falling in love upon the slightest provocation!”

— H. Rider Haggard

46. “The Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against me when my clock strikes.”

— H. Rider Haggard

47. “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

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

— H. Rider Haggard

49. “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.”

— H. Rider Haggard

50. “I love thee, Macumazahn, for we have grown grey together, and there is that between us that cannot be seen, and yet is too strong for breaking;.”

— H. Rider Haggard