Rudyard Kipling Quotes

307 Sourced Quotes

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling
Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.

Rudyard Kipling
A man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.

Rudyard Kipling
It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

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

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.'
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

Rudyard Kipling
'There is none like to me!' says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.

Rudyard Kipling
Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end;
Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,
Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice.

Rudyard Kipling
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark—
Brandy for the Parson,
'Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

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
He's an absent-minded beggar and his weaknesses are great—
But we and Paul must take him as we find him.

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
After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food.

Rudyard Kipling
You must learn to forgive a man when he's in love. He's always a nuisance.

Rudyard Kipling
For to admire an' for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide—
It never done no good to me,
But I can't drop it if I tried!

Rudyard Kipling
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst.

Rudyard Kipling
They settled things by making up a saying, 'What the Bandar-log think now the Jungle will think later': and that comforted them a great deal.

Rudyard Kipling
We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints.

Rudyard Kipling
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Rudyard Kipling
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

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

Rudyard Kipling
Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die—
The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.

Rudyard Kipling
I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives ye led were mine.

Rudyard Kipling
There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
That carries no colours or crest,
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Is breaking the road for the rest.

Rudyard Kipling
When the cabin port-holes are dark and green
Because of the seas outside;
When the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between)
And the steward falls into the soup-tureen,
And the trunks begin to slide;
When Nursey lies on the floor in a heap,
And Mummy tells you to let her sleep,
And you aren't waked or washed or dressed,
Why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed)
You're 'Fifty North and Forty West!'

Rudyard Kipling