Rudyard Kipling > Quotes

“One can’t prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Book of Words: Selections From Speeches and Addresses Delivered Between 1906 and 1927

“and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Works PergamonMedia

“As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures,
I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours:
In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all,
That Our House stand together and the pillars do not fall.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“The Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton – the big fat blade bone – and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the first Singing Magic in the world.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

“You must not forget the suspenders, Best Beloved.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

“What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair to die!”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books

“Hearts are like horses. They come and they go against bit or spur.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“It isn't what you say so much.
It's what you mean when you say it.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

“[A Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage speaks to a museum curator.]
And I come here alone. For five--seven--eighteen--forty years it was in my mind that the old Law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry....'
So it comes with all faiths.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance,”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“A Ripple Song

Once a ripple came to land
In the sunset burning-
Lapped against a maiden's hand,
By the ford returning.

Dainty foot and gentle breast-
Here, across, be glad and rest.
"Maiden, wait," the ripple saith
"Wait awhile, for I am Death!"

'Where my lover calls I go-
Shame it were to treat him coldly-
'Twas a fish that circled so,
Turning over boldly.'

Dainty foot and tender heart,
Wait the loaded ferry-cart.
"Wait, ah, wait!" the ripple saith;
"Maiden, wait, for I am Death!"

'When my lover calls I haste-
Dame Disdain was never wedded!'
Ripple-ripple round her waist,
Clear the current eddied.

Foolish heart and faithful hand,
Little feet that touched no land.
Far away the ripple sped,
Ripple-ripple-running red!”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books

“An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“The meaning of my star is war.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“There is no gift like friendship. Remember this - when you become a young man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

“I am more likely to give help than to ask it"—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—"still I should like to know.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Our hearts where they rocked our cradle,
Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith, and our hope, and our honor,
We pledge to our native soil.
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“It is better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammeh, on her old platform, opposite the old Ajaib gher, the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Body and spirit, I surrendered whole, To harsh Instructors- and received a soul.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“What is this," said the leopard,"that is so 'sclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?”
― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

“Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order—never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

“We never pay anyone Dane-geld, no matter how trifling the cost. For the end of that game is oppression and shame and the nation that plays it is lost!”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Too much work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much drink”
― Rudyard Kipling

“When a man does good work out of all proportion to his pay, in seven cases out of nine there is a woman at the back of the virtue.

The two exceptions must have suffered from sunstroke.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges -- Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”
― Rudyard Kipling

“To hear is one thing, to know is another.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity.”
― Rudyard Kipling