King Solomon's Mines Quotes

“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 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.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Wealth is good, and if it comes our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth.”
― Henry Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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 overtake us also!
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, King Solomon's Mines

“Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“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.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“...for women bring trouble as surely as night follows day...”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“Everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“A sharp spear," runs the Kukuana saying, "needs no polish.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“Surely my lord will not hide his beautiful white legs!" exclaimed Infadoos regretfully.

But Good persisted, and once only did the Kukuana people get the chance of seeing his beautiful legs again. Good is a very modest man. Henceforward they had to satisfy their aesthetic longings with his one whisker, his transparent eye, and his movable teeth.”
― H.Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“It is far. But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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 overtake us also!”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“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 old Colony. I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago that I made my pile. It is a big pile now that I have got it — I don't yet know how big — but I do not think I would go through the last fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid man, and dislike violence; moreover, I am almost sick of adventure. I wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also to the "Ingoldsby Legends." Let me try to set down my reasons, just to see if I have any.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines

“Women's eyes are always bright, whatever the colour,”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Curse it!" said Good—for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using strong language when excited—contracted, no doubt, in the course of his nautical career; "curse it! I've killed him.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“But fortune favours the brave,”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“... I think that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.”
― H. Rider Haggard, Campfire Audio King Solomon's Mines

“quite the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is a gentleman? I don't quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers—no, I will scratch out that word "niggers," for I do not like it. I've known natives who are, and so you will say, Harry, my boy, before you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with lots of money and fresh out from home, too, who are not.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially considering that there is no woman in it—except Foulata. Stop, though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a petticoat in the whole history.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Love her who is present, for be sure she who is absent is false to thee;”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and height of a naval officer's objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated himself.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“Now," I whispered. Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir Henry's elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“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, King Solomon's Mines