Rudyard Kipling Quotes

307 Sourced Quotes

He became an officer and a gentleman, which is an enviable thing;

Rudyard Kipling
Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously — the midday sun always excepted.

Rudyard Kipling
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law —
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Rudyard Kipling
When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, It's pretty, but is it Art?

Rudyard Kipling
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken—it may be fair words shall prevail.

Rudyard Kipling
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

Rudyard Kipling
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Rudyard Kipling
Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.

Rudyard Kipling
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Rudyard Kipling
Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!
There's no discharge in the war!

Rudyard Kipling
Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

Rudyard Kipling
A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Rudyard Kipling
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!

Rudyard Kipling
And oft-times cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade,
And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made;
And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.

Rudyard Kipling
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "Savior of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.

Rudyard Kipling
Four things greater than all things are,—
Women and Horses and Power and War.

Rudyard Kipling
Men and women may sometimes, after great effort, achieve a creditable lie; but the house, which is their temple, cannot say anything save the truth of those who have lived in it.

Rudyard Kipling
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.

Rudyard Kipling
Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.

Rudyard Kipling
Two things greater than all things are,
The first is Love, and the second War.

Rudyard Kipling
Body and spirit I surrendered whole
To harsh instructors—and received a soul...
If mortal man could change me through and through
From all I was—What may the God not do?

Rudyard Kipling
Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was: O my Best Beloved, when the tame animals were wild.

Rudyard Kipling
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Rudyard Kipling
In the flush of the hot June prime,
O'ersleek flood-tides afire,
I hear him hurry the chime
To the bidding of checked Desire;
Till the sweated ringers tire
And the wild bob-majors die.
Could I wait for my turn in the godly choir?
(Shoal! 'Ware shoal!) Not I!

Rudyard Kipling
Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

Rudyard Kipling
I have stated it plain, an' my argument's thus (It's all one, says the Sapper) There's only one Corps which is perfect - that's us; An' they call us Her Majesty's Engineers, With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

Rudyard Kipling
The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth point goes;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.

Rudyard Kipling
Doctors have been exposed—you always will be exposed—to the attacks of those persons who consider their own undisciplined emotions more important than the world's most bitter agonies—the people who would limit and cripple and hamper research because they fear research may be accompanied by a little pain and suffering.

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