Quotes from Rudyard Kipling

Then the Kolokolo Bird said with a mournful cry, Go to the banks of the great, grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi At the hole where he went in Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin. Hear what little Red-Eye saith: Nag, come up and dance with death! Eye to eye and head to head, (Keep the measure, Nag.) This shall end when one is dead; (At thy pleasure, Nag.) Turn for turn and twist for twist-- (Run and hide thee, Nag.) Hah! The hooded Death has missed! (Woe betide thee, Nag!)

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life.

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.

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...

I follow the Law—the Most Excellent Law.

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas! —Seal Lullaby

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.

All sensible men are of the same religion, but no sensible man ever tells.

Leave him alone, he's as mad as a hatter!

ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave, —W.E. Henley.

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.

Witta feared nothing - except to be poor.

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

I wish to eat, said Mowgli. I am a stranger in this part of the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here.

chasing silly rose leaves

Father Wolf ran out a few paces and heard Shere Khan

As he stood in the red light of the oil-lamp, strong, tall, and beautiful, his long black hair sweeping over his shoulders, the knife swinging at his neck, and his head crowned with a wreath of white jasmine, he might easily have been mistaken for some wild god of a jungle legend. -Son, she said at last,—her eyes were full of pride,—have any told thee that thou art beautiful beyond all men? Hah? said Mowgli, for naturally he had never heard anything of the kind.

When little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy till they have chalked it up on a door. And this also is Literature.

ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with

Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.

When the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.

It seems - and who so astonished as they? - that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty of both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful.

He has oppressed Beetle, M'Turk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these - these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry Capivi!' Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.