Rudyard Kipling > Quotes

“What avail is honour or a sword against a pen?”
― Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

“Badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself

“Open the old cigar-box .....let me consider anew..... Old friends,
and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing 'o bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba..... I hold to my first-sworn vows,
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse!”
― Rudyard Kipling

“For a wolf, no,” said Tabaqui, “but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?” He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story

“He spent all that day roaming”
― Rudyard Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

“This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Hsh! He is asleep. We will not wake him, for his strength is very great. The kites have come down to see it. The black ants have come up to know it. There is a great assembly in his honor.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Mowgli will drive Mowgli. Go back to thy people. Go to man. -Akela”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books

“Hear what little Red-Eye saith: “Nag, come up and dance with death!”
― Rudyard Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

“Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee—the madness—and run. "Enter,”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Where are the fish, though?"
"In the sea they say, in the boats we pray," said Dan, quoting a fisherman's proverb.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

“The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“The camel's hump is an ugly lump,
Which well you might see at the zoo.
But uglier yet is the hump we get,
For having to little to do.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

“When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

“This leads me to the Higher Editing. Take of well-ground Indian Ink as much as suffices and a camel-hair brush proportionate to the inter-spaces of your lines. In an auspicious hour, read your final draft and consider faithfully every paragraph, sentence and word, blacking out where requisite. Let it lie by to drain as long as possible. At the end of that time, re-read and you should find that it will bear a second shortening. Finally, read it aloud alone and at leisure. Maybe a shade more brushwork will then indicate or impose itself. If not, praise Allah and let it go, and ‘when thou hast done, repent not.’ The shorter the tale, the longer the brushwork and, normally, the shorter the lie-by, and vice versa. The longer the tale, the less brush but the longer lie-by. I have had tales by me for three or five years which shortened themselves almost yearly. The magic lies in the Brush and the Ink. For the Pen, when it is writing, can only scratch; and bottled ink is not to compare with the ground Chinese stick. Experto crede.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself

“Boil ’em once or twice in hot water, and they’ll come as fair as chicken and ham.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King

“And burdened Gentile o’er the main,
Must bear the weight of Israel’s hate
Because he is not brought again
In triumph to Jerusalem.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Baa Baa, Black Sheep

“We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true,” they shouted.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay ?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,
An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat - jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,
An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,
An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:
Bloomin' idol made o' mud
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay...

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-lo-lo!
With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek agin my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.
Elephints a-pilin' teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay...

But that's all shove be'ind me - long ago an' fur away
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay...

I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an' grubby 'and -
Law! wot do they understand?
I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay...

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
O the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay !”
― Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay

“the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself,”
― Rudyard Kipling, The cat that walked by himself

“Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

“THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE Just to give you an idea of the immense variety of the Jungle Law, I have translated into verse (Baloo always recited them in a sort of sing-song) a few of the laws that apply to the wolves. There are, of course, hundreds and hundreds more, but these will do for specimens of the simpler rulings.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book

“One man in a thousand will stick closer than a brother, but the thousandth man will stand by your side, to the gallows foot and after.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“If a man brings a good mind to what he reads he may become, as it were, the spiritual descendant to some extent of great men, and this link, this spiritual hereditary tie, may help to just kick the beam in the right direction at a vital crisis; or may keep him from drifting through the long slack times when, so to speak, we are only fielding and no balls are coming our way.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“I saw the infernal Thing blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I laughed aloud a second time, and checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going mad.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories

“Then Kotick roared to the seals: "I've done my best for you these five seasons past. I've found you the island where you'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks you won't believe. I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves!”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Do not pay too much attention to fame, power, or money. Some day you will meet a person who cares for none of these, and then you will know how poor you are.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Like Princes crowned they bore them--
Like Demi-Gods they wrought,
When the New World lay before them
In headlong fact and thought.
Fate and their foemen proved them
Above all meed of praise,
And Gloriana loved them,
And Shakespeare wrote them plays!
. . . . . . .
Now Valour, Youth, and Life's delight break forth
In flames of wondrous deed, and thought sublime---
Lightly to mould new worlds or lightly loose
Words that shall shake and shape all after-time!

Giants with giants, wits with wits engage,
And England-England-England takes the breath
Of morning, body and soul, till the great Age
Fulfills in one great chord:--Elizabeth!”
― Rudyard Kipling, Complete Verse

“These be the sort" — she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her mouth with paan — "These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe, suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse than the pestilence. They do harm to kings.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave mouth growling...”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book