Quotes from Rudyard Kipling

I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter's way of jadoo; but her argument was much more simple: "The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic," said she.

And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.

No jury, we knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on native evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees

If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.

Still, the place was a undoubtedly a telegraph-office

May no ill dreams disturb my rest, Nor Powers of Darkness me molest. —Evening Hymn.

No; I want to send a telegram, if there's any electric fluid in this old tomb.

For these simples used aright Shall restore a failing sight. These shall cleanse and purify Webbed and inward-turning eye; These shall show thee treasure hid, Thy familiar fields amid, At thy threshold, on thy hearth, Or about thy daily path; And reveal (which is thy need) Every man a King indeed!

Limmershin is a very odd little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth.

All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers and visionaries: as t has been from the beginning and will continue to the end. Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must raise on every occasion. Swiftly - as Orientals understand speed - with long explanations, with abuse and windy talk, carelessly, amid a hundred checks for little things forgotten.

You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three, But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee. You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop, But the way of Pilly Winky's not the way of Winkie Pop!

When the flicker of London's sun falls faint on the club-room's green and gold, The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mold— They scratch with their pens in the mold of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start When the Devil mutters behind the leaves: It's pretty, but is it art?

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!

So Time that is o'er-kind To all that be, Ordains us e'en as blind, As bold as she: That in our very death, And burial sure, Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, See how our works endure!

Of all the trees that grow so fair Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun Than Oak, and Ash and Thorn.

It is not any common earth, Water or wood or air, But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye That you and I will fare.

If we confine our attention entirely to the slang of the day - that is to say, if we devote ourselves exclusively to modern literature - we get to think the world is progressing when it is only repeating itself...It is only when one reads what men wrote long ago that one realizes how absolutely modern the best of the old things are.

Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

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

So Mowgli went away and hunted with the four cubs in the jungle from that day on. But he was not always alone, because years afterward, he became a man and married. But that is a story for grown-ups.

With you-to the end of the world!

Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail, A spectre at my door, Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail -- I shall but love you more, Who, from Death's House returning, give me still One moment's comfort in my matchless ill.