Rudyard Kipling > Quotes

“No; I want to send a telegram, if there's any electric fluid in this old tomb.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Naulahka

“THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT The night we felt the earth would move
We stole and plucked him by the hand,
Because we loved him with the love
That knows but cannot understand.
And when the roaring hillside broke,
And all our world fell down in rain,
We saved him, we the Little Folk;
But lo! he does not come again!
Mourn now, we saved him for the sake
Of such poor love as wild ones may.
Mourn ye! Our brother will not wake,
And his own kind drive us away!
Dirge of the Langurs.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book

“Or ever the knightly years were gone      With the old world to the grave,”
― Rudyard Kipling, Indian Tales

“With the knife—with the knife that men use—with the knife of the hunter, I will stoop down for my gift.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I may go to the Council Rock.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look down, for he could only see the top sides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann, the Kite, balancing and wheeling”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Bring up the great bull-buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd-bulls with the angry eyes. Drive them to and fro as I order.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“And Kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty) and said, "I am the only white seal that has ever been born on the beaches, and I am the only seal, black or white, who ever thought of looking for new islands.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under my feet.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Waters of the Waingunga, the Man Pack have cast me out. I did them no harm, but they were afraid of me. Why?”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“I always try to believe the best of everybody -it saves so much trouble.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“There's never a flood goes shoreward now but lifts a keel we manned; there's never an ebb goes seaward now but drops our dead on the sand—but slinks our dead on the sands forlore, from the Ducies to the Swin.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Seven Seas

“He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou drink again? Sleep and dream of the kill.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“So this is the manling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, Manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow—
They beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go.
The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight;
"They sell their furs to the trading-post: they sell their souls to the white.
The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's crew;
Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few.
But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken—
Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the Men!”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books

“O it's Tommy this, an'Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away": But it's "Thank you, Mister Adkins," when the band begins to play...”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment
Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
tho' they come from the ends of the earth!”
― Rudyard Kipling, Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads

“Deadly Beliefs Chapter 14 |Mifflintown, Pennsylvania – February 2, 2015
“All the people like us are We, and everyone else is They.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue. By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill--and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck--the Pack will turn against him and against thee. They will hold a jungle Council at the Rock, and then--and then--I have it!" said Bagheera, leaping up. "Go thou down quickly to the men's huts in the valley, and take some of the Red Flower which they grow there, so that when the time comes thou mayest have even a stronger friend than I or Baloo or those of the Pack that love thee. Get the Red Flower.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“And there's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King

“I have heard now and again of such a thing, but never in our Pack or in my time," said Father Wolf. "He is altogether without hair, and I could kill him with a touch of my foot. But see, he looks up and is not afraid.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib’—he looked at his boots ruefully. ‘No; I am Kim. 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, Kim

“Had I guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm.

I had run him up from the quarter deck to trade with his own yard-arm;

I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,

And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;

I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,

I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;

I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,

And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;

I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasseled his beard in the mesh,

And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“HOW FEAR CAME The stream is shrunk—the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
With fevered jowl and dusty flank
Each jostling each along the bank;
And by one drouthy fear made still,
Forgoing thought of quest or kill.
Now 'neath his dam the fawn may see,
The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he,
And the tall buck, unflinching, note
The fangs that tore his father's throat.
The pools are shrunk—the streams are dry,
And we be playmates, thou and I,
Till yonder cloud—Good Hunting!—loose
The rain that breaks our Water Truce.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Second Jungle Book

“One view called me to another; one hill top to its fellow, half across the country, and since I could answer at no more trouble than the snapping forward of a lever, I let the country flow under my wheels.”
― Rudyard Kipling, They

“H’sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,” said Mother Wolf; “it is Man.” The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to roll from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders wood-cutters, and gipsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night, I think, if they see things they don't understand”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“They were great, their views were leaded,
And their deaths were triple-headed,
So they catch the eye in running through the files
(Show as blazes in the mazes of the files);
For their ‘paramours and priests,’
And their gross, jack-booted feasts,
And their epoch-marking actions see the files.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Five Nations

“Christmas In India

Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry --
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring --
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly --
Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"

High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us --
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it.
Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.

Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together --
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment --
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is hut -- we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus --
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.”
― Rudyard Kipling