"I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits."

"'A man who comes to be hanged,' pursued Jasper, impartially, 'has the satisfaction of knowing that he has brought society to its last resource. He is a man of such fatal importance that nothing will serve against him but the supreme effort of law. In a way, you know, that is success.'"

"It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all."

"It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched."

"To be at other people's orders brings out all the bad in me."

"The insult was thrown out with a peculiarly reckless air; it astounded the hearer, who sat for an instant with staring eyes and lips apart; then the blood rushed to his cheeks."

"The thought, however, of his girls having to work for money was so utterly repulsive to him that he could never seriously dwell upon it."

"No, no; women, old or young, should never have to think about money."

"It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble."

"To be identified with the public is the divine gift of the best-sellers in popular Romance and, no doubt, in popular realism. E. M. Forster once spoke of the novelist as sending down a bucket into the unconscious; the author of She installed a suction pump. He drained the whole reservoir of the public's secret desires. Critics speak of the reader suspending unbelief; the best-seller knows better; man is a believing animal."

"Haggard is the text-book case of the mythopoeic gift pure and simple... Haggard's best work will survive because it is based on an appeal well above high-water mark. The fullest tides of fashion cannot demolish it. A great myth is relevant as long as the predicament of humanity lasts; as long as humanity lasts. It will always work, on those who can receive it, the same catharsis."

"To Mr. Kipling as to Mr. Haggard I owe a debt of gratitude for having stimulated my youthful imagination and this I gladly acknowledge, but Mr. Wells I have never read and consequently his stories of Mars could not have influenced me in any way."

"Sir Rider Haggard Was completely staggered When his bride-to-be Announced "I AM SHE!""

"Then he went off to bed."

". . . they [the Walloos] are but the rotting stump of a tree that once was tall and fair. The dust of Time hides many such stumps . . . But what of that? Other fine trees are growing which also will become stumps in their season, and so on for ever."

". . . little in the world is pretty, except the world itself."

"when men seek a god . . . they make one like themselves, only larger, uglier, and more evil . . . Also, often they say that this god was once their king, since at the bottom all worship their ancestors who gave them life, if they worship anything at all, and often, too, because they gave them life, they think that they must have been devils. Great ancestors were the first gods . . . and if they had not been evil they would never have been great. Look at Chaka, the Lion of the Zulus. He is called great because he was so wicked and cruel, and so it was and is with others if they succeed, though, if they fail, men speak otherwise of them."

"The world is very old and there have been peoples in it of whom we have heard nothing"

"Is it not so with many of the gods men set up? They are not and never were, but their priests are and shake the spear of power and pierce the hearts of men with terrors. What, then, does it matter about the gods whom no man sees, when the priest is there shaking the spear of power and piercing the hearts of their worshippers? The god is the priest or the priest is the god—have it which way you like"

"Life is more than gold . . . and great honour is better than both."

". . . those who worship the Black One [i.e. the Devil], at last the Black One takes by the throat."

". . . the devil never dies"

"Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours."

". . . now and again it is wise to cease from being wise, lest Heaven should grow jealous of our wisdom and want to share it."

". . . I thought I saw the mind of Providence acting through Hans. Yes, the cunning of the Hottentot had been used by the Powers above to sweep from the earth a vile tyranny and to destroy a blood-soaked idol and its worshippers."

"It is what is in a man that matters . . . not what he looks like outside, as women often used to say to me when I was young"

". . . disillusionment is often painful, you know"

"Never before was there such a sudden disrobement of an ecclesiastical dignitary draped in all his trappings."

"You may all have noticed that however piously disposed, there is a point at which the majority of women become very practical indeed."

". . . if you live long enough, you will learn that this world is full of deceptions"

". . . is there anything so mighty as water in the world, I wonder"

"Superstition is still king of most of the world, though often it calls itself Religion."

". . . we are all fools in our different ways, and how can any one dig out of his heart the folly that his mother put there before he was born?"

". . . there is a way out of most difficulties if only it can be hit upon."

"While we breathe there is hope, and all that seems lost still may be won"

". . . these priests, after the fashion of priests all the world over, now aspired to the absolute rule of the race"

"So kick away the burning sticks from beneath the water of your anger and let it cease from boiling, and go forth as you have promised, to see wonderful things and do wonderful deeds and snatch the pure and innocent out of the hands of evil gods or men."

". . . all men are cowards . . . in one matter or another, though in the rest they may be brave enough."

". . . there are always plenty of fools in the world and the fool who comes after is just as big as the fool who went before. Death spills the water of wisdom upon the sand . . . and sand is thirsty stuff that soon grows dry again. If it were not so . . . men would soon stop falling in love with women, and yet even great ones . . . fall in love."

". . . the dead keep their wisdom to themselves"

". . . the extreme of unmorality is as fascinating to study as the extreme virtue and often more so."

"Bethink you, have there not been days, aye and months, in your own life when you would have rejoiced to sleep in mindlessness? And should we not, perchance, be happier, all of us, if like the beasts we could not remember, foreknow and understand? Oh! men talk of Heaven, but believe me, the real Heaven is one of dreamless sleep, since life and wakefulness, however high their scale and on whatever star, mean struggle, which being so oft mistaken, must breed sorrow—or remorse that spoils all."

"It is only the nervous that climb the highest points of anything, and this is true of fights as of all others."

"Yet it is true that sun and moon and earth are born of the same black womb of chaos. Therefore in the beginning they were identical, as doubtless they will be in the end when, their journeyings done, they rush together to light space with a flame at which the mocking gods that made them may warm their hands. Well, so it is with men, . . . whose soul-stuff is drawn from the gulf of Spirit by Nature’s hand, and, cast upon the cold air of this death-driven world, freezes into a million shapes each different to the other and yet, be sure, the same."

". . . the mad often see well in their dreams, though these are not sent by a god . . . The mind in its secret places knows all things . . . although it seems to know little or nothing, and when the breath of vision or the fury of a soul distraught blows away the veils or burns through the gates of distance, then for a while it sees and learns, since, whatever fools may think, often madness is true wisdom."

"The worst of scandals becomes romantic and even respectable in two thousand years; witness that of Cleopatra with Cæsar, Mark Antony and other gentlemen. The most virtuous read of Cleopatra with sympathy, even in boarding-schools, and it is felt that were she by some miracle to be blotted out of the book of history, the loss would be enormous. The same applied to Helen, Phryne, and other bad lots. In fact now that one comes to think of it, most of the attractive personages in history, male or female, especially the latter, were bad lots. When we find someone to whose name is added “the good” we skip."

"Fire may be lovely and attractive, also comforting at a proper distance, but he who sits on the top of it is cremated, as many a moth has found."

". . . when lost in a forest every path that may lead to safety should be explored"

". . . what a man believes is true for him and will certainly befall. If it were otherwise, what is the use of faith which in a thousand forms supports our race and holds it from the horrors of the Pit? Only those who believe nothing inherit what they believe—nothing"

". . . all joy grows from the root of pain."