Rudyard Kipling > Quotes

“Cites and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye
Which daily die;
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spend and unconsidered Earth,
The cities will rise again”
― Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

“And it is I, Raksha [The Demon], who answers. The man's cub is mine, Lungri—mine to me! He shall not be killed. He shall live to run with the Pack and to hunt with the Pack; and in the end, look you, hunter of little naked cubs—frog-eater—fish-killer—he shall hunt thee! Now get hence, or by the Sambhur that I killed (I eat no starved cattle), back thou goest to thy mother, burned beast of the jungle, lamer than ever thou camest into the world! Go!" 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”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. . . . The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son."
Rudyard Kipling”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Leave him alone, he's as mad as a hatter!”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish- the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, an investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It was another perfect day - soft, mild and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous

“Well-meanin' man. Did it all for the best." Stalky curled gracefully round the stair-rail. "Head in a drain-pipe. Full confession in the left boot.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Complete Stalky and Co.

“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man-
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:-
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins"
From "The Gods of the Copybook Headings”
― Rudyard Kipling

“And if you expect you'll gain anything from us by your way of approachin' us, you're jolly well mistaken. That's all. Good-night.'
They clattered upstairs, injured virtue on every inch of their backs.
'But - but what the dickens have we done?' said Harrison, amazedly, to Craye.
'I don't know. Only - it always happens that way when one has anything to do with them. They're so beastly plausible.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Complete Stalky and Co.

“and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“What is a woman that you forsake her
And the hearth fire and the home acre
To go with that old grey widow-maker?”
― Rudyard Kipling

“I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp," said the lama, smiling slowly.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“The Irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas! —Seal Lullaby”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“He has oppressed Beetle, M'Turk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these - these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry "Capivi!"'
Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Complete Stalky and Co.

“I follow the Law—the Most Excellent Law.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“No doubt but ye are the People - absolute, strong and wise;
Whatever your hear has desired ye have not withheld from your eyes.
On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving lies!”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Like everything else in the world, it is one man's work.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

“If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two imposters just the same ... If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you ... If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run ... you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear”
― Rudyard Kipling

“This, O my Best Beloved is a story – a new and wonderful story – a story quite different from the other stories”
― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories

“Stalky,' in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and wily, as applied to plans of action; and 'stalkiness' was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Complete Stalky and Co.

“all Desire is Illusion and a new binding upon the Wheel.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“Then the Kolokolo Bird said with a mournful cry, "Go to the banks of the great, grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant's Child

“Each dog barks in its own yard.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
"Nag, come up and dance with death!"
Eye to eye and head to head,
(Keep the measure, Nag.)
This shall end when one is dead;
(At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist--
(Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
(Woe betide thee, Nag!)”
― Rudyard Kipling, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

“All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever tells.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling: Songs from Books and Later Songs from Books

“As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a jungle legend. -"Son," she said at last,—her eyes were full of pride,—"have any told thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men?"

"Hah?" said Mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the kind.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books