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 se...
Ignosi bound the diadem upon his brows. Then advancing, he placed his foot upon the broad chest of his headless foe and broke out into a chant, or rather a pæan of triumph, so beautiful, and yet so ut...
I make a decree, and it shall be published from the mountains to the mountains; your names, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, shall be hlonipa even as the names of dead kings, and he who speaks them sh...
Everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it.
Each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fi...
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.
Another minute passed, when suddenly something round fell with a soft but heavy thud upon the stone flooring of the veranda, and came bounding and rolling along past me. For a moment I did not rise, b...
And so I lay awake, smoking and reflecting on many things, but, being of a practical turn of mind, chiefly on how we were to give those Masai villains the slip. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and...
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 e...
A sharp spear, runs the Kukuana saying, needs no polish.
Provinces
House and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wea...
When is truth pleasing? It is only when we clothe it's nakedness with rags of imagination, or sweeten it with fiction, that it can please.
What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul’s thought.
Then there came a vision to me, a vision that was sent in answer to my prayer, or, perchance, it was a madness born of my sorrows.
Then I saw that the birds were a flock of pauw or bustards, and that they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and...
The flesh dies, or at least it changes, and its passions pass, but that other passion of the spirit — that longing for oneness — is undying as itself.
That which is alive hath known death, and that which is dead yet can never die, for in the Circle of the Spirit life is naught and death is naught. Yea, all things live for ever, though at times they...
Take what life can give you, Ana, and do not trouble about the offerings which are laid in the tombs for time to crumble.
Take up the tale, quoth Umslopogaas; it is a merry one.