River of the Gods Quotes

“The more I study religion,” he wrote, “the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anyone but himself.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“How melancholy a thing is success,” he would later write. “Whilst failure inspires a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories ‘are shadows, not substantial things.’ ”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“Attempts to explore the river’s length from north to south had been thwarted by a vast inland swamp known as the Sudd.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“Fascination with the Nile had grown not only because it is the longest river in the world, with a basin that spans more than a million square miles, one tenth of the African continent, but because it has made possible one of the oldest and richest continuous civilizations on earth. The fertile green swath of the Nile floodplain covers less than 5 percent of Egypt but is home to more than 96 percent of its population. The rest of the land is desert. So vital are the river’s annual floods that ancient Egyptians based their calendars on them, starting each new year with the first day of the floods.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“John Hanning Speke.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“The dog that refuses the Governmental crumb shall never be allowed by a retributive destiny to pound with his teeth the Governmental loaf.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“The world is a great book, of which those who never leave home read but a page.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“Like others at the time, Burton and Speke were unapologetic in their racism, with all of its attendant arrogance and ignorance, but they were sickened by the slave trade, which, Burton wrote, “had made a howling desert of the land,” and took great pride in their country’s efforts to end it.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“How melancholy a thing is success,” he would later write. “Whilst failure inspires a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories ‘are shadows, not substantial things.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“The more I study religion,” he wrote, “the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anyone but himself.” Although a spy and an infidel and an agnostic,”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“I repeat my motto: poco spero, nulla chiedo.” Little I hope, nothing I ask.”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“Speke was far from the first to espouse the Hamitic Myth, which had been used for decades to justify slavery. His popularity in Victorian England, however, as well as his fervent belief in the myth and his eagerness to discuss it, led to its increased acceptance. The stunning achievements of the ancient Egyptians, which the British Empire had been so eager to study and appropriate, were explained away by yet another distinction, this time between the sons of Ham. Only the youngest, Canaan, had carried the curse of his father, the argument went, but Mizraim, the ancestor of the Egyptians, did not. By 1994, the Hamitic Myth would not only feed”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“..the charm of the scenery was perhaps enhanced by the reflection that my eyes might never look upon it again....Masses of brown-purple clouds covered the quarter of the heavens where the sun was about to rise. Presently the mists, ruffled like ocean billow and luminously fringed with Tyrian purple, were cut by filmy rays, while, from behind their core, the internal living fire shot forth its broad beams, like the spokes of a huge aerial wheel, rolling a flood of gold over the light blue waters of the lake.

[RICHARD BURTON, The Lake Regions of Central Africa]”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile

“shibboleth”
― Candice Millard, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile