Top 100 Rudyard Kipling Quotes
#1. At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.
Rudyard Kipling
#2. A Man can never have too many books, too much red wine or too much ammunition.
Rudyard Kipling
#3. Not getting what you want either means you don't want it enough, or you have been dealing too long with the price you have to pay.
Rudyard Kipling
#4. Hunting Verse - Feet that make no noise; eyes that can see in the dark; ears that can hear the winds in their lairs, and sharp white teeth, all
Rudyard Kipling
#5. A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
Rudyard Kipling
#6. There was a young man of Quebec
Who was frozen in snow to his neck,
When asked, 'Are you Friz?'
He replied, 'Yes I is,
But we don't call this cold in Quebec.'
Rudyard Kipling
#7. Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers.
Rudyard Kipling
#9. 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
#10. 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:
Rudyard Kipling
#11. I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp, said the lama, smiling slowly.
Rudyard Kipling
#12. A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment.
Rudyard Kipling
#13. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.
Rudyard Kipling
#14. The others down by the melon bed. Nagaina spun clear round,
Rudyard Kipling
#15. It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is "Run and find out," and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.
Rudyard Kipling
#16. Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death.
Rudyard Kipling
#17. Now I shall go far and far into the North,
playing the Great Game
Rudyard Kipling
#18. 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
#19. If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting ... if you can dream, and not make dreams your master; if you can think, and not make thoughts your aim; if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same; ... yours is the earth and everything that's in it ...
Rudyard Kipling
#21. 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
#22. And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat (23).
Rudyard Kipling
#23. When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next.
Rudyard Kipling
#24. And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose, And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ...
Rudyard Kipling
#25. 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
#26. Not only do words infect, egotize, narcotize, and paralyze, but they enter into and colour the minutest cells of the brain ...
Rudyard Kipling
#27. We had a kettle; we let it leak: Our not repairing made it worse. We haven't had any tea for a week ... The bottom is out of the Universe.
Rudyard Kipling
#28. Favouritism governed kissage,
Even as it does in this age.
Rudyard Kipling
#29. Single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints.
Rudyard Kipling
#30. Ay, roar well," said Bagheera, under his whiskers, "for the time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man.
Rudyard Kipling
#31. The glory of the garden lies in more than meets the eye.
Rudyard Kipling
#32. I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.
Rudyard Kipling
#33. Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.
Rudyard Kipling
#34. There aren't twelve-hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don't care.
Rudyard Kipling
#35. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down panting,
Rudyard Kipling
#38. 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
#40. Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep ... For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that an' Chuck him out, the brute! But it's Saviour of his country, when the guns begins to shoot!
Rudyard Kipling
#41. And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden, You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.
Rudyard Kipling
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring. The water comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it falls. Why?
Rudyard Kipling
#45. All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they.
Rudyard Kipling
#46. We're poor little lambs who've lost our way, Baa! Baa! Baa! We're little black sheep who've gone astray, Baa-aa-aa! Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree, Damned from here to Eternity, God ha' mercy on such as we, Baa! Yah! Bah!
Rudyard Kipling
#47. Then Kotick roared to the seals: I've done my best for you these five seasons past. I've found you the island where you'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks you won't believe. I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves!
Rudyard Kipling
#49. 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
#50. Let each man be judged by his deeds, I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed.
Rudyard Kipling
#51. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.
Rudyard Kipling
#52. And the Eldest Magician said, 'How wise are little children who see and are silent!
Rudyard Kipling
#53. 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
#54. Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head.
Rudyard Kipling
#56. There rise her timeless capitals of empires daily born, whose plinths are laid at midnight and whose streets are packed at morn; and here come tired youths and maids that feign to love or sin in tones like rusty razor blades to tunes like smitten tin.
Rudyard Kipling
#58. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble
Rudyard Kipling
#59. He became an officer and a gentleman, which is an enviable thing;
Rudyard Kipling
#60. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command.
Rudyard Kipling
#61. So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day on. But he was not always alone, because years afterward he became a man and married.
But that is a story for grown-ups.
Rudyard Kipling
#62. I wasted my substance, I know I did, on riotous living, so I did, but there's nothing on record to show I did more than my betters have done.
Rudyard Kipling
#63. Your Gods and my Gods - do you or I know which are the stronger? - Native Proverb.
Rudyard Kipling
#64. A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition
Rudyard Kipling
#66. O it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and Tommy 'ow's your soul/But it's thin red line of heroes when the drums begin to roll.
Rudyard Kipling
#67. Where are the fish, though?"
"In the sea they say, in the boats we pray," said Dan, quoting a fisherman's proverb.
Rudyard Kipling
#68. 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.
Rudyard Kipling
#69. Cites and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye
Which daily die;
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spend and unconsidered Earth,
The cities will rise again
Rudyard Kipling
#70. The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow.
Rudyard Kipling
#71. 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
#75. A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, Manling.
Rudyard Kipling
#76. Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all.
Rudyard Kipling
#77. 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
#78. Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.
Rudyard Kipling
#79. Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another,
which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.
Rudyard Kipling
#80. The Bat sets free - The herds are shut in byre and hut For loosed till dawn
Rudyard Kipling
#82. A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.
Rudyard Kipling
#83. What stands if Freedom fail? What dies of England live?
Rudyard Kipling
#84. All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever tells.
Rudyard Kipling
#85. Ye've a furtive look in your eye - a furtive, sneakin', poachin' look in your eye, that 'ud ruin the reputation of an archangel!
Rudyard Kipling
#86. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave Them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us, and delivered us, bound, to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
Rudyard Kipling
#87. Be slow to judge for we know little of what has been done and nothing of what has been resisted.
Rudyard Kipling
#88. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy.
Rudyard Kipling
#90. I've never done any cattle-liftin', but it seems to me-e-e that one might just as well be stalky about a thing as not.
Rudyard Kipling
#91. 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.
Rudyard Kipling
#92. The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.
Rudyard Kipling
#93. There are gems of wondrous brightness
Ofttimes lying at our feet,
And we pass them, walking thoughtless,
Down the busy, crowded street.
If we knew, our pace would slacken,
We would step more oft with care,
Lest our careless feet be treading
To the earth some jewel rare.
Rudyard Kipling
#94. 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
Rudyard Kipling
#95. Tis beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just IT. Some women will stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street.
Rudyard Kipling
#96. The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it is because he is the town crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody who cares to listen.
Rudyard Kipling
#97. 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
#98. 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
#100. Satan himself can't save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.
Rudyard Kipling
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
