Top 100 Rudyard Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists.
Jorge Luis Borges
#9. 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
#10. You perceive, do you not, that our national fairy tales reflect the inmost desires of the Briton and the Gaul?
Rudyard Kipling
#11. A Man can never have too many books, too much red wine or too much ammunition.
Rudyard Kipling
#12. 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
#13. 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
#15. (Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost.)
Rudyard Kipling
#16. 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
#17. On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer; China 'crost the Bay!
Rudyard Kipling
#18. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice - An humble and a contrite heart.
Rudyard Kipling
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
Rudyard Kipling
#22. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Rudyard Kipling
#23. 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
#24. I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.
Rudyard Kipling
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.
Rudyard Kipling
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Private Mulvaney is wholly ignorant of his strength.
Rudyard Kipling
#32. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the Earth and everything in it ...
Rudyard Kipling
#33. 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
#35. 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
#38. The Irish move to the sound of the guns like salmon to the sea
Rudyard Kipling
#39. Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers.
Rudyard Kipling
#40. I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.
Rudyard Kipling
#41. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. In the jungle, life and food depend on keeping your temper.
Rudyard Kipling
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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
#53. I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp, said the lama, smiling slowly.
Rudyard Kipling
#54. 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
#55. Boil 'em once or twice in hot water, and they'll come as fair as chicken and ham.
Rudyard Kipling
#56. And what should they know of England who only England know?
Rudyard Kipling
#57. If any Question why We Died Tell them because our Father's Lied.
Rudyard Kipling
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. Sing to your fledglings again, Mother, oh lift up your head!
Rudyard Kipling
#61. 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
#62. The others down by the melon bed. Nagaina spun clear round,
Rudyard Kipling
#63. 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
#64. Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling
#65. How can you do anything until you have seen everything,or as much as you can?
Rudyard Kipling
#66. 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
#67. We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
Rudyard Kipling
#68. Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.
Rudyard Kipling
#69. 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
#70. If your mirror be broken, look into still water; but have a care that you do not fall in. - Hindu Proverb.
Rudyard Kipling
#73. 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
#74. Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent.
Rudyard Kipling
#75. She walked on and on till she melted out of the picture - like - like a shadow jumping over a candle ...
Rudyard Kipling
#76. What is a woman that you forsake her
And the hearth fire and the home acre
To go with that old grey widow-maker?
Rudyard Kipling
#77. Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets.
Rudyard Kipling
#78. Thou art of the Jungle and not of the Jungle. And I am only a black panther. But I love thee, Little Brother.
Rudyard Kipling
#79. Now I shall go far and far into the North,
playing the Great Game
Rudyard Kipling
#80. Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance,
Rudyard Kipling
#81. If a man can hear the truth he's spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ...
Rudyard Kipling
#82. 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
#83. 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
#86. Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee - the madness - and run. "Enter,
Rudyard Kipling
#88. His line was the jocundly-sentimental Wardour Street brand of adventure, told in a style that exactly met, but never exceeded, every expectation.
Rudyard Kipling
#89. 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
#91. Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there was some one else in the world, ...
Rudyard Kipling
#93. 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
Rudyard Kipling
#94. I have my own matches and sulphur, and I'll make my own hell.
Rudyard Kipling
#95. 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!
Rudyard Kipling
#96. If you've 'eard the East a-callin', why you won't 'eed nothin' else.
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else, but them spicy garlic smells, an' the sunshine an' the palm trees, an' the tinkly temple-bells.
Rudyard Kipling
#97. A man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.
Rudyard Kipling
#99. The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Rudyard Kipling
#100. 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
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