Rudyard Kipling Quotes

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

The glory of the garden lies in more than meets the eye.

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

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind.

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!

The tumalt and shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heat. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget.

The Navy is very old and very wise.

You must learn to forgive a man when he's in love. He's always a nuisance.

One half of my head, from the top of my skull to the cleft of my jaw, hammers, bangs, sizzles while the other half, serene and content, looks on at the agony next door.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

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.

One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person.

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

I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all i knew); Theirs names are What and Why and When And How And Where and Who.

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...

What stands if Freedom fail? What dies of England live?

Let all who build beware The load, the shock, the pressure Material can bear. So, when the buckled girder Lets down the grinding span, The blame of loss, or murder, Is laid upon the man. Not on the Stuff - the Man!

Take up the White Man's burden -- send forth the best ye breed -- go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need.

God gives all men all earth to love, but since man's heart is small, ordains for each one spot shall prove belov?d over all.

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

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

If any Question why We Died Tell them because our Father's Lied.

A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition

Satan himself can't save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.

What is the moral? Who rides may read.

No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be. Not all the books on all the shelves - but what the teachers are themselves.

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

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

There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.

Savings represent much more than mere money value. They are the proof that the saver is worth something in himself. Any fool can waste; any fool can muddle; but it takes something more of a man to save and the more he saves the more of a man he makes of himself. Waste and extravagance unsettle a man's mind for every crisis; thrift, which means some form of self-restraint, steadies it.

These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began- Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man.

He who faces no calamity gains no courage.

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

The motto of all the mongoose family is, "Run and find out," and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.

I had never seen the jungle. They fed me behind bars from an iron pan till one night I felt that I was Bagheera - the Panther - and no man's plaything, and I broke the silly lock with one blow of my paw and came away; and because I had learned the ways of men, I became more terrible in the jungle than Shere Khan.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears.

Gentleman-rankers out on the spree, damned from here to Eternity.

All things considered, there are only two kinds of men in the world: those that stay at home and those that do not.

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

I've taken my fun where I've found it.

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

And the end of the fight is tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear, "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

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?

There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and woman to fill our day; But when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers & Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

(An unhappy childhood was not) an unsuitable preparation for my future, in that it demanded a constant wariness, the habit of observation, and the attendance on moods and tempers; the noting of discrepancies between speech and action; a certain reserve of demeanour; and automatic suspicion of sudden favours.

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