Rudyard Kipling Quotations

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Never look backwards or you'll fall down the stairs.

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.

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

A man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours.

Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.

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.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

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?'

An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

All the people like us are we, and everyone else is They.

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade.

A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

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.

For the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one.

He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.

San Francisco is a mad city - inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

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 dammed of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, mother o' mine o mother o' mine.

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.

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, / And - every - single - one - of- them - is - right!

The place was packed as full of smells as a bale is of cotton.

She was as immutable as the hills. But not quite so green.

Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers, / With England's own coal, up and down the salt seas?

No doubt but ye are the People - your throne is above the King's. / Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things.

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears

Of all the trees that grow so fair, / Old England to adorn, / Greater are none beneath the Sun, / Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky.

Politics are not my concern . . . They impressed me as a dog's life without a dog's decencies.

On the road to Mandalay, / Where the flyin'-fishes play, / An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

But a fool must follow his natural bent / (Even as you and I!).

If blood be the price of admiralty, / Lord God, we ha' paid in full!

He who rebukes the world is rebuked by the world

Have it jest as you've a mind to, but I've proved it time on time, / If you want to change her nature you have got to give her lime.

He is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.

King Solomon drew merchantmen, / Because of his desire / For peacocks, apes and ivory, / From Tarshish unto Tyre.

Keep ye the Law - be swift in all obedience -/ Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.

It is at Bombay that the smell of All Asia boards the ship miles off shore, and holds the passenger's nose till he is clear of Asia again

Pleasant the snaffle of Courtship, improving the manners and carriage, But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thorn-bit of marriage

Pass the hat for your credit's sake, and pay- pay - pay!

Such boastings as the Gentiles use, / Or lesser breeds without the Law.

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order - never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request.

Who knows the heart of the Christian? How does he reason? What are his measures and balances? Which is his season For laughter, forbearance or bloodshed, and what devils move him When he arises to smite us? I do not love him

You'll never plumb the Oriental mind, and if you did, it isn't worth the toil

You just don't know how to use the English language.

Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men!

When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, And go to your God like a soldier

We have had an Imperial lesson; it may make us an Empire yet!

We get the Hump - / Cameelious Hump - / The Hump that is black and blue!

We ain't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too, But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints, Why single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints

'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.

The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives ye led were mine

Believe the best of everybody.

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

When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre, / He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea; / An' what he thought 'e might require, / 'E went an' took - the same as me!

There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake, / Or the way of a man with a maid.

You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind, / And the thresh of the deep-sea rain; / You have heard the song - how long? how long? / Pull out on the trail again!

Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand, / An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned.

Ye thought? Ye are not paid to think.

When the Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried.

Through the Jungle very softly flits a shadow and a sigh - / He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!

You haf too much Ego in your Cosmos

What stands if Freedom fall? / Who dies if England live?

East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

Every one wanted to say so much that no one said anything in particular.

And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!

An' for all 'is dirty 'ide / 'E was white, clear white inside / When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire.

And your rooms at college was beastly - more like a whore's than a man's.

Duke's son - cook's son - son of a hundred kings - / (Fifty thousand horse and foot going to Table Bay!).

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

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

Is it true, what you told me jest now, that you never done a hand's turn o' work in all your born life? Must feel kinder awful, don't it?

I've taken my fun where I've found it / An' now I must pay for my fun.

The sins ye do by two and two, ye must pay for, one by one

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a clever woman to manage a fool

I've a head like a concertina, I've a tongue like a buttonstick, I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick, But I've had my fun o' the Corp'ral's Guard; I've made the cinders fly, And I'm here in the Clink for a thundering drin

I've a head like a concertina, I've a tongue like a button-stick, / I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick.

Pull out, pull out on the Long Trail - the trail that is always new!

Prize, oh! Haul! shouted Dan, but the shout ended in a shrill, double shriek of horror, for out of the sea came - the body of the dead Frenchman buried two days before! The hook had caught him under the right armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and shoulders above water.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing - 'Oh how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade, While better men than we go out and start their working lives At grubbing weeds from gravel paths with broken dinner knives

Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor / With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?

Back to the army again, sergeant, / Back to the army again, / Out o' the cold an' the rain.

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!