Rudyard Kipling Quotes

What stands if freedom fall?

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.

Favouritism governed kissage, Even as it does in this age.

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.

There is no harm in a man's cub.

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

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

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?

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.

No doubt but ye are the People - absolute, strong and wise; Whatever your hear has desired ye have not withheld from your eyes. On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving lies!

I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race... and the hearts of the meanest were humbled.

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

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.

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

I have no gift of words, but I speak the truth.

Every woman knows all about everything.

After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food.

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.

Your new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half child.

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!

Body and spirit I surrendered whole To harsh instructors and received a soul... If mortal man could change me through and through From all I was What may the God not do?

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

None of the Jungle People like being disturbed.

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

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.

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

The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.

What is the moral? Who rides may read.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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!

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

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.

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

But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever, Amen.

Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep

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.

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.

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

Witta feared nothing - except to be poor.

I have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who have wished me evil (General Maximus)

A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.

What is a woman that you forsake herAnd the hearth fire and the home acreTo go with that old grey widow-maker?