Plain Tales from the Hills Quotes

“A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously—the midday sun always excepted.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilised Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“Every man is entitled to his own religious opinions; but no man – least of all a junior – has a right to thrust these down other men’s throats.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me – she looked a trifle faded and jaded in the lamplight: “Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“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.

All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny top-scum stuff that people call "civilization".”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“No jury, we knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on native evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter’s way of jadoo; but her argument was much more simple: “The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic,” said she.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“The Viceroy possessed no name – nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“One of these days, Strickland is going to write a little book on his experiences. That book will be worth buying; and even more, worth suppressing.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most amusements only mean trying to win another person’s money. Sickness does not matter, because it’s all in the day’s work, and if you die another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between death and burial.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“promised his love to keep her quiet—that he had never”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

“Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills