H. Rider Haggard

The tool carves the statue and the hand holds the tool but the spirit guides the band.

. . . who ever sees Wisdom until she is flying away?

Never stretch out your hand to Death till he stretches out his to you

. . . 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.

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.

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

[T]he 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.

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

[M]emory 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 I shall do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes.

There is no such thing as magic, though there is such a thing as a knowledge of the secrets of nature.

Ah, how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathereth it like water, but like water it runneth through 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 …

[T]hinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.

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