Rudyard Kipling Quotations | Page 3

it's always best to tell the truth.

Like the destroyer, the submarine has created its own type of officer and man with language and traditions apart from the rest of the service, and yet at the heart unchangingly of the Service

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!

There is no sin greater than ignorance.

Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent.

There's no jealousy in the grave.

We are the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities.

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many.

All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever tells.

Each dog barks in his own yard!

After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food.

A boy of to-day is affected by every change of tone and gust of opinion, so that he lies even when he desires to speak the truth.

...the flannelled fools at the wicket or the mudied oafs at the goals...

Let each man be judged by his deeds, I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed.

Well, if I am a man, a man I must become.

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.

Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!

None of the Jungle People like being disturbed.

Who has smelled the woodsmoke at twilight, who has seen the campfire burning, who is quick to read the noises of the night?

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

Follow the dream, and always the dream, and only the dream.

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.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty. Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; But it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool. I never made a mistake in my life; At least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears, and so preparing the way for you later on. Sisters are women first, and sisters afterwards; and you will find that you do yourself harm.

You perceive, do you not, that our national fairy tales reflect the inmost desires of the Briton and the Gaul?

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

Literature is a splendid mistress, but a bad wife.

You may talk o' gin and beer When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.

If a man brings a good mind to what he reads he may become, as it were, the spiritual descendant to some extent of great men, and this link, this spiritual hereditary tie, may help to just kick the beam in the right direction at a vital crisis; or may keep him from drifting through the long slack times when, so to speak, we are only fielding and no balls are coming our way.

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!

I have my own matches and sulphur, and I'll make my own hell.

When man has come to the Turnstiles of Night, all the creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colorless.

I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.

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

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.

The tumalt and shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heat. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget.

There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hotheaded, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths.

There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and woman to fill our day; But when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures, I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours: In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all, That Our House stand together and the pillars do not fall.

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!

If you can wait and not be tired of 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.

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.

TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew - Wanted to know what the River knew, Twenty Bridges or twenty-two, For they were young, and the Thames was old And this is the tale that River told:

A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.

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.

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

Many wear the robes, but few walk the Way." The Lama in Kim

God help us for we knew the worst too young.

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

She is intensely human, and lives to look upon life.

If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim.

A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.

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.

War is an ill thing, as I surely know. But 'twould be an ill world for weaponless dreamers if evil men were not now and then slain.

Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood

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

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.

How can you do anything until you have seen everything,or as much as you can?

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

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.

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?

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.

The motto of all the mongoose family is, "Run and find out," and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.

Take up the White Man's burden -- send forth the best ye breed -- go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need.

It thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his hand on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail scythed back and forth against the blue sky.

It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening.

'E's all'ot sand an' ginger when alive, An''e's generally shammin' when'e's dead.

What stands if freedom fall?

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose, And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows...

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.

We never pay anyone Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!

But he couldn't lie if you paid him and he'd starve before he stole.

I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chains - I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs. I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar cane; I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs. I will go out until the day, until the morning break - Out to the wind's untainted kiss, the water's clean caress; I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake. I will revisit my lost love and playmates masterless!

Youth had been a habit of hers for so long that she could not part with it.

Now, don't be angry after you've been afraid. That's the worst kind of cowardice.

It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.

We be of one blood, ye and I

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

The heart of a man to the heart of a maid- Light of my tents, be fleet- Morning awaits at the end of the world, And the world is all at our feet.

A Time For Prayer "In times of war and not before, God and the soldier we adore. But in times of peace and all things righted, God is forgotten and the soldier slighted." -Rudyard Kipling

The white moth to the closing vine, The bee to the open clover, And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood Ever the wide world over.

They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods

The beasts are very wise, Their mouths are clean of lies, They talk one to the other, Bullock to bullock brothers Resting after their labors, Each in stall with his neighbors, But man with goad and whip, Breaks up their fellowship, Shouts in their silky ears Filling their soul with fears. When he has plowed the land, He says: "they understand." But the beasts in stall together, Freed from the yoke and tether, Say as the torn flank smoke: "Nay, 'twas the whip that spoke."

Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.

It'is like a book, I think, this bloomin' world.

He who faces no calamity gains no courage.

There aren't twelve-hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don't care.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth; Four things greater than all things are Women and Horses and Power and War.

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

If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

You sometimes see a woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping.

Adam was a gardener, and God, who made him, sees that half of all good gardening is done upon the knees.

Most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money.

No one as yet has approached the management of New York in a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do so, because reflections on the long narrow pig-trough are construed as malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the American people, and lead to angry comparisons.

An angry skipper makes an unhappy crew.

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.

The Guns, Thank God, The Guns...