Quotes from Rudyard Kipling

We have done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love and Truth,We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

The toad beneath the harrow knowsExactly where each tooth point goes;The butterfly upon the roadPreaches contentment to that toad.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,And the women come out to cut up what remains,Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brainsAn' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose, And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows...

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,And every single one of them is right.

We had a kettle: we let it leak: Our not repairing it made it worse. We haven't had any tea for a week.... The bottom is out of the Universe!

The great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees.

I have eaten your bread and salt.I have drunk your water and wine.The deaths ye died I have watched besideAnd the lives ye led were mine.

Who hath desired the sea?—the sight of salt water unbounded.

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbours.

For frantic boast and foolish word—Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street.

Lo, all our pomp of yesterdayIs one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Lesser breeds without the Law.

If I were damned of body and soul,I know whose prayers would make me whole,Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine.

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,Baa! Baa! Baa!We're little black sheep who've gone astray,Baa—aa—aa!Gentlemen rankers out on the spree,Damned from here to Eternity,God ha' mercy on such as we,Baa! Yah! Baa!

When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried,When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died,We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an eon or two,Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.

Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned.

The tumult and the shouting dies;The captains and the kings depart.

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

The Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"

Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.

They change their skies above them,But not their hearts that roam.