Who is Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling, in full Joseph Rudyard Kipling, (born December 30, 1865, Bombay [now Mumbai], India—died January 18, 1936, London, England), English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
Kipling’s father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an artist and scholar who had considerable influence on his son’s work, became curator of the Lahore Museum, and is described presiding over this “wonder house” in the first chapter of Kim, Rudyard’s most famous novel. His mother was Alice Macdonald, two of whose sisters married the highly successful 19th-century painters Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter, while a third married Alfred Baldwin and became the mother of Stanley Baldwin, later prime minister. These connections were of lifelong importance to Kipling.
Rudyard Kipling Quotes
1. Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
2. He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
3. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble
4. I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards.
5. We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.
6. If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
7. A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.
8. If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;!
9. Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.
10. For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
11. If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, And-which is more-you’ll be a man my son.
12. I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.
13. A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition
14. Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.
15. 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.
16. No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
17. I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
18. You must learn to forgive a man when he’s in love. He’s always a nuisance.
19. Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
20. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
21. Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade.
22. The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
23. There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.
24. We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
25. The world is very lovely, and it’s very horrible–and it doesn’t care about your life or mine or anything else.
26. My heart is so tired
27. War is an ill thing, as I surely know. But ‘twould be an ill world for weaponless dreamers if evil men were not now and then slain.
28. This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.
29. Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie.
30. 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.
31. All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!
32. The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.
33. When young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion and despair, all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge. Though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach faith where no faith was.
34. I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chains –
I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.
I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar cane;
I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs.
I will go out until the day, until the morning break –
Out to the wind’s untainted kiss, the water’s clean caress;
I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake.
I will revisit my lost love and playmates masterless!
35. 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.
36. And the first rude sketch that the world has seen
was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it art?
37. Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.
38. I have my own matches and sulphur, and I’ll make my own hell.
39. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
40. I have seen something of this world,” she said over the trays, “and there are but two sorts of women in it– those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this.
41. A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
42. (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.
43. She is intensely human, and lives to look upon life.
44. 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:
45. We be of one blood, ye and I
46. How can you do anything until you have seen everything,or as much as you can?
47. 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
48. A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.
49. OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
50. There is but one task for all —
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
51. The glory of the garden lies in more than meets the eye.
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn’t even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, ‘Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we’ll keep house.
55. I have struck a city – a real city – and they call it Chicago. The other places don’t count. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages
56. He travels the fastest who travels alone.
57. All we have of freedom
All we use or know
This our fathers bought for us
Long and long ago
58. 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?
59. 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.
60. It is not a good fancy,’ said the llama. ‘What profit to kill men?’
Very little – as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.
