Rudyard Kipling Quotes & Sayings

The American has no language, he has a dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and so forth — Rudyard Kipling

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

God help us for we knew the worst too young. — Rudyard Kipling

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 sky above them was an intense velvety black, changing to bands of Indian red on the horizon, where the great stars burned like street-lamps. From time to time a greenish wave of the Northern Lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, flick like a flag, and disappear; or a meteor would crackle from darkness to darkness, trailing a shower of sparks behind. Then they could see the ridged and furrowed surface of the floe tipped and laced with strange colours - red, copper, and bluish; but in the ordinary starlight everything turned to one frost-bitten gray. — Rudyard Kipling

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

Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother, — Rudyard Kipling

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss ... — Rudyard Kipling

Literature is a splendid mistress, but a bad wife. — Rudyard Kipling

When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey. — Rudyard Kipling

If I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself. — Rudyard Kipling

If any Question why We Died Tell them because our Father's Lied. — Rudyard Kipling

The masterless man ... afflicted with the magic of the necessary words ... Words that may become alive and walk up and down in the hearts of the hearers. — Rudyard Kipling

I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera - the Panther - and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan. — Rudyard Kipling

When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next. — Rudyard Kipling

I have seen something of this world," she said over the trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it
those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this. — Rudyard Kipling

Tiger! Tiger! 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

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away! — Rudyard Kipling

I've never sailed the Amazon,
I've never reached Brazil;
But the Don and Magdalena,
They can go there when they will!
Yes, weekly from Southampton,
Great steamers, white and gold,
Go rolling down to Rio
(Roll down - roll down to Rio!)
And I'd like to roll to Rio
Some day before I'm old!
I've never seen a Jaguar,
Nor yet an Armadill
O dilloing in his armour,
And I s'pose I never will,
Unless I go to Rio
These wonders to behold
Roll down - roll down to Rio
Roll really down to Rio!
Oh, I'd love to roll to Rio
Some day before I'm old! — Rudyard Kipling

When young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion and despair, all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge. Though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach faith where no faith was. — Rudyard Kipling

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse. — Rudyard Kipling

When a crew and a captain understand each other to the core, it takes a gale, and more than a gale, to put their ship ashore. — Rudyard Kipling

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life. — Rudyard Kipling

Let all who build beware The load, the shock, the pressure Material can bear. So, when the buckled girder Lets down the grinding span, The blame of loss, or murder, Is laid upon the man. Not on the Stuff - the Man! — Rudyard Kipling

The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities. — Rudyard Kipling

There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And every single one of them is right. — Rudyard Kipling

If you give someone more than they can do, they will do it. If you give them only what they can do, they will do nothing. — Rudyard Kipling

If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your acquaintance, he may not love you but he will take a deep interest in your movements ever afterwards — Rudyard Kipling

Something I owe to the soil that grew
More to the life that fed
But most to Allah who gave me two
Separate sides to my head. — Rudyard Kipling

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty. — Rudyard Kipling

A Man can never have too many books, too much red wine or too much ammunition. — Rudyard Kipling

Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council - Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey - rose upon his hind quarters and grunted. — Rudyard Kipling

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

He will kill mice and he will be kind to babies ... but when the moon gets up and the night comes, he is the Cat that Walks by Himself. — Rudyard Kipling

Bagheera to see if the Panther was angry too, and Bagheera's eyes were as hard as jade stones. "Thou hast been with the Monkey People
the gray apes
the people without a law
the eaters of everything. That is great shame." "When Baloo hurt my head," said Mowgli (he was still on his back), "I went away, and the gray — Rudyard Kipling

Anything from Kipling — Rudyard Kipling

If you've 'eard the East a-callin', why you won't 'eed nothin' 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. — Rudyard Kipling

Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore. — Rudyard Kipling

Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work. — Rudyard Kipling

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions, largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done. — Rudyard Kipling

She walked on and on till she melted out of the picture - like - like a shadow jumping over a candle ... — Rudyard Kipling

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

Never ask a man his opinion of a woman's dress when he is desperately and abjectly in love with the wearer. — Rudyard Kipling

Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to — Rudyard Kipling

Who has delivered us, who? Tell me his nest and his name. Rikki, the valiant, the true, Tikki, with eyeballs of flame, Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame! — Rudyard Kipling

And what should they know of England who only England know? — Rudyard Kipling

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

It's clever, but is it art? — Rudyard Kipling

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-
'Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you,
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.' — Rudyard Kipling

Humble because of knowledge; mighty by sacrifice. — Rudyard Kipling

Remember, Bagheera loved thee," he cried, and bounded away. At the foot of the hill he cried again long and loud, "Good hunting on a new trail, Master of the Jungle! Remember, Bagheera loved thee. — Rudyard Kipling

If I were dammed of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, mother o' mine o mother o' mine. — Rudyard Kipling

Any fool can waste, any fool can muddle, but it takes something of a man to save, and the more he saves the more of a man does it make of him. — Rudyard Kipling

These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began-
Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man. — Rudyard Kipling

He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors. — Rudyard Kipling

A tale from which pieces have been raked out is like a fire that has been poked. One does not know the operation has been performed, but everyone feels the effect. — Rudyard Kipling

Ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with — Rudyard Kipling

Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan — Rudyard Kipling

Teach us delight in simple things, and mirth that has no bitter springs. — Rudyard Kipling

My heart is heavy with the things I do not understand. — Rudyard Kipling

One learns more from a good scholar in a rage than from a score of lucid and laborious drudges. — Rudyard Kipling

color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle — Rudyard Kipling

The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shotgun into Nag just behind the hood. — Rudyard Kipling

This was to me a far more terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For though, Lord help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of decent or godly living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a certain goodness of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very sorry of all that I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost wholly: having in place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I am not, as I have before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what I have just written may not be readily understood. — Rudyard Kipling

Huh! It is only a pahari," said Kim over his shoulder. "Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?"
The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for three generations. — Rudyard Kipling

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

Your Gods and my Gods - do you or I know which are the stronger? - Native Proverb. — Rudyard Kipling

Till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew. — Rudyard Kipling

They are fools who kiss and tell'
Wisely has the poet sung.
Man may hold all sorts of posts
If he'll only hold his tongue. — Rudyard Kipling

They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better. — Rudyard Kipling

This is Burma and it is unlike any land you know about. — Rudyard Kipling

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. — Rudyard Kipling

One man in a thousand, Solomon says.
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it's worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
The Thousandth Man — Rudyard Kipling

four tumbling, squealing cubs, — Rudyard Kipling

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing 'Oh how wonderful' and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out, and start their working lives
By grubbing weeds from garden paths with broken dinner knives. — Rudyard Kipling

And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge! — Rudyard Kipling

Each dog barks in its own yard. — Rudyard Kipling

When the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. — Rudyard Kipling

When Earth's last picture is painted And the tubes are twisted and dried When the oldest colors have faded
And the youngest critic has died
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it
Lie down for an aeon or two
'Till the Master of all good workmen Shall put us to work anew
And those that were good shall be happy They'll sit in a golden chair
They'll splash at a ten league canvas With brushes of comet's hair
They'll find real saints to draw from Magdalene, Peter, and Paul
They'll work for an age at a sitting And never be tired at all.
And only the Master shall praise us. And only the Master shall blame.
And no one will work for the money.
No one will work for the fame.
But each for the joy of the working, And each, in his separate star,
Will draw the thing as he sees it.
For the God of things as they are! — Rudyard Kipling

All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the world: those that stay at home and those that do not. — 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

I've taken my fun where I've found it, An' now I must pay for my fun, For the more you 'ave known o' the others The less will you settle to one. — Rudyard Kipling

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

We are the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities. — Rudyard Kipling

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. — Rudyard Kipling

Payday came and with it beer — Rudyard Kipling

A DEAD STATESMAN
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18 — 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

It seems - and who so astonished as they? - that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty of both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful. — Rudyard Kipling

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves. — Rudyard Kipling

Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public? — Rudyard Kipling

A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, Manling. — Rudyard Kipling

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Where every separate tooth-point goes ;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad. — Rudyard Kipling

They will come back, come back again,
As long as the red earth rolls.
He never wasted a leaf or a tree.
Do you think he would squander souls? — Rudyard Kipling

Only the keeper sees
that,where the ring-dove broods
and the badgers roll at ease,
there was once a road through the woods — Rudyard Kipling

Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work. — Rudyard Kipling

I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago. The other places don't count. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages — Rudyard Kipling

Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade. — Rudyard Kipling

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers. — Rudyard Kipling

Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie. — Rudyard Kipling