Quotes from Rudyard Kipling

Across a world where all men grieve And grieving strive the more, The great days range like tides and leave Our dead on every shore.

His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing, said Mother Wolf quietly. He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, and he has come here to make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and we and our children must run when the grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!

And that is how Mowgli was entered into the Seeonee Wolf Pack for the price of a bull and on Baloo's good word. Now

What avail is honour or a sword against a pen?

Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself. But he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.

This, O my Best Beloved is a story – a new and wonderful story – a story quite different from the other stories

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow.

He spent all that day roaming

Tabaqui the Jackal must have bitten all these people, he said to himself

I saw the infernal Thing blocking my path in the twilight. The dead travel fast, and by short cuts unknown to ordinary coolies. I laughed aloud a second time, and checked my laughter suddenly, for I was afraid I was going mad.

The Law of the Jungle, which never orders anything without a reason, forbids every beast to eat Man except when he is killing to show his children how to kill, and then he must hunt outside the hunting grounds of his pack or tribe.

One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person. If a man is keen on reading, I think he ought to open his mind to some older man who knows him and his life, and to take his advice in the matter, and above all, to discuss with him the first books that interest him.

Otherwise, he would be far away in the jungle; tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things.

Ah! said the troop horse. That explains it. I can trust Dick. You could put a whole regiment of Dicks on my back without making me feel any better. I

and if somehow my conduct ain't all your fancy paints, why single men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints.. From 'Tommy

Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to

Now I see, however,'—he exhaled smoke slowly—'that it is with them as with all men—in certain matters they are wise, and in others most foolish. Very foolish it is to use the wrong word to a stranger; for though the heart may be clean of offence, how is the stranger to know that? He is more like to search truth with a dagger.

Open the old cigar-box .....let me consider anew..... Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? A million surplus Maggies are willing 'o bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke. Light me another Cuba..... I hold to my first-sworn vows, If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse!

The sin is mine and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself for now I see it was but make-belief—that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search. So my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the wisdom of thy little years.

Hear what little Red-Eye saith: "Nag, come up and dance with death!

If a man brings a good mind to what he reads he may become, as it were, the spiritual descendant to some extent of great men, and this link, this spiritual hereditary tie, may help to just kick the beam in the right direction at a vital crisis; or may keep him from drifting through the long slack times when, so to speak, we are only fielding and no balls are coming our way.

hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.

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

for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature.