Top 100 Quotes About Kipling
#1. Readers have the power that professors pretend they wield. Millions of words of professorial contempt have failed to kill Kipling. Praising Shaw to the skies has been vain.
Gene Wolfe
#2. The first
sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act
great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures
us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.
Dale Carnegie
#3. Kipling, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, reveals the tin-pot evangelist with increasing clarity as youth and its ribaldries pass away and he falls back upon his fundamentals.
H.L. Mencken
#4. Mr. Kipling stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.
Dylan Thomas
#5. Pictures are very important. I remember at home we had illustrated editions of Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So Stories' and 'The Jungle Book,' which were read to me. Living in Zimbabwe made it very real, especially the 'Just So Stories' with the 'great grey-green greasy Limpopo.'
Korky Paul
#6. From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
Oscar Wilde
#7. Kipling called it a very long conversation.
Lauren Groff
#8. During five literary generations every enlightened person had despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there.
George Orwell
#9. My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Pearl Buck, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to name a few.
Debbie Macomber
#10. I have experienced both triumph and disaster, and, to quote Kipling, have treated those two imposters just the same.
Jeffrey Archer
#11. When small wounds are left untreated, they can fest and become far more serious injuries. -Mr. Kipling
Gabrielle Zevin
#12. Be still, O little one, for I am Death. Another cobra had said that, in something else by Kipling. The cobras in his stories were heartless but they spoke beautifully, like wicked kings in the Old Testament.
Donna Tartt
#13. Authors as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, E. Nesbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien have shaped modern paganism as greatly as any theological underpinnings.
Liz Williams
#14. I said, you and Jem were very special to me - you were my dream-children, but as Kipling said, that's another story . . . call on me tomorrow, and you'll find me a grave man.
Harper Lee
#15. One of the problems with NPR is that there is so much political correctness that if you've got a name that looks like it was made up by Rudyard Kipling, you've got a better chance of getting hired. I'm a white guy named Tony Snow, for heaven's sake. That's as white as it goes.
Tony Snow
#16. If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you ... The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son.
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
#17. Dad used to read aloud to us from Dickens and Kipling. My tastes were omnivorous. I read anything I could lay my hands on, but the memory that stays with me is that of my father reading the Jungle Books to us when we were young. Beautiful stories!
A.B. Guthrie Jr.
#18. I think it's safe to say that 'manliness' was a common theme in my upbringing. It was an assumed status, but - and here's the important bit - it was the Rudyard Kipling kind. The emphasis was on gentlemanly conduct, sportsmanship, fairness and stoicism.
Ian Watson
#19. The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.
George Orwell
#20. When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait, and obey." Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.
Rose Tremain
#21. As for the writers who have influenced me they are many. Hemingway, Chandler, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William Goldman, Flannery O'Conner, Carson McCullers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others. As a kid Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard.
Joe R. Lansdale
#22. Because of Kipling, I've sometimes wondered about keeping a mongoose about the house. But given the cobra population in Silver Spring, Maryland - zero, when last I checked - we hardly need a Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
Michael Dirda
#23. Kipling is a jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting. It is better to start by admitting that, and then to try to find out why it is that he survives while the refined people who have sniggered at him seem to wear so badly.
George Orwell
#24. ...for all art is one, as Kipling has written, and your art chooses you, not you the art.
Michael Powell
#26. What appeared as unendurable hardship to soldiers of other nationalities produced a species of exhilaration in our lads, raised on a diet of Kipling and institutional porridge. Some
Steven Pressfield
#27. Because when River Joshua Kipling decided you were worth protecting, he did it with everything he had.
Abbi Glines
#28. As Kipling said, that's another story...
Harper Lee
#29. I'm like Kipling's cat - I walk by my wild lone and wave my wild tail where so it pleases me.
L.M. Montgomery
#30. Kipling: Where's your sense of humor?
Rebis: We're working on reconstructing it ...
Grant Morrison
#31. 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
Rudyard Kipling
#32. When crew and captain understand each other to the core, It takes a gale and more than a gale to put their ship ashore; For the one will do what the other commands, although they are chilled to the bone; And both together can live through weather that neither could face alone. KIPLING
Lettie B. Cowman
#33. Imperialism as he [Kipling] sees it is a sort of forcible evangelising.
George Orwell
#34. Quoting Kipling, I never got over the wonder of a people who, having extirpated the aboriginals of their continent more completely than any modern race had ever done, honestly believed they were a godly little New England community, setting examples to mankind.
Sarah Vowell
#35. It may be that there is an afterlife and I'll look incredibly stupid, but at least I will have had a crammed pre afterlife, a crammed life, so to me the most important thing is as Kipling put it, to fill every unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.
Stephen Fry
#37. Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists.
Jorge Luis Borges
#38. I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's 'The Elephant's Child' and 'The Jungle Book.' Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant.
Michael Morpurgo
#40. Like the Britain of Beaverbrook and Kipling, Japan in the early twentieth century was a jingoistic nation, subduing weaker countries with the help of populist politicians and sensationalist journalism.
Pankaj Mishra
#41. 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
#42. You perceive, do you not, that our national fairy tales reflect the inmost desires of the Briton and the Gaul?
Rudyard Kipling
#43. A Man can never have too many books, too much red wine or too much ammunition.
Rudyard Kipling
#44. 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
#45. Ah! What avails the classic bent
And what the cultured word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme-
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?
Rudyard Kipling
#47. (Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost.)
Rudyard Kipling
#48. As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Rudyard Kipling
#49. On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer; China 'crost the Bay!
Rudyard Kipling
#50. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice - An humble and a contrite heart.
Rudyard Kipling
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
Rudyard Kipling
#54. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Rudyard Kipling
#55. 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
#56. I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.
Rudyard Kipling
#57. Pleasant it is for the Little Tin Gods
When great Jove nods;
But Little Tin Gods make their little mistakes
In missing the hour when great Jove wakes.
Rudyard Kipling
#58. 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
#59. His nickname through all the wards was ' Little Friend of all the World'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue, of course.
Rudyard Kipling
#60. We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.
Rudyard Kipling
#61. Go softly by that river side Or when you would depart, You'll find its every winding tied; And knotted round your heart.
Rudyard Kipling
#62. 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
#63. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Private Mulvaney is wholly ignorant of his strength.
Rudyard Kipling
#64. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the Earth and everything in it ...
Rudyard Kipling
#65. 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
#67. 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
#70. The Irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea
Rudyard Kipling
#71. Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers.
Rudyard Kipling
#72. I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.
Rudyard Kipling
#73. 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.
Rudyard Kipling
#75. 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
#76. Now Rann the Kite brings home the night That Mang the Bat sets free - The herds are shut in byre and hut For loosed till dawn are we. This is the hour of pride and power, Talon and tush and claw. Oh, hear the call! - Good hunting all That keep the Jungle Law!
Rudyard Kipling
#77. In the jungle, life and food depend on keeping your temper.
Rudyard Kipling
#79. 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
#80. Now whither does THIS trail lead?" Kaa's voice was gentler. "Not a moon since there was a Manling with a knife threw stones at my head and called me bad little tree-cat names, because I lay asleep in the open.
Rudyard Kipling
#81. 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
#82. The Son of Man goes forth to war, A golden crown to gain; His blood-red banner streams afar - Who follows in his train? I
Rudyard Kipling
#83. 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
#85. I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp, said the lama, smiling slowly.
Rudyard Kipling
#86. 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
#87. Boil 'em once or twice in hot water, and they'll come as fair as chicken and ham.
Rudyard Kipling
#88. And what should they know of England who only England know?
Rudyard Kipling
#89. If any Question why We Died Tell them because our Father's Lied.
Rudyard Kipling
#90. 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
#91. Then he jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthenware to hold down the head.
Rudyard Kipling
#92. Sing to your fledglings again, Mother, oh lift up your head!
Rudyard Kipling
#93. 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
#94. The others down by the melon bed. Nagaina spun clear round,
Rudyard Kipling
#95. 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
#96. Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
#97. How can you do anything until you have seen everything,or as much as you can?
Rudyard Kipling
#98. All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call 'civilization.
Rudyard Kipling
#99. We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
Rudyard Kipling
#100. Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.
Rudyard Kipling
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