Quotes from Rudyard Kipling

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.

Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets.

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.

The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky The deer to the wholesome wold; And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid, As it was in the days of old.

The white moth to the closing vine, The bee to the open clover, And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood Ever the wide world over.

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; but we've proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.

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

Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.

Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie.

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

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.

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!

All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they.

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.

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.

A Time For Prayer In times of war and not before, God and the soldier we adore. But in times of peace and all things righted, God is forgotten and the soldier slighted. -Rudyard Kipling

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!

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.

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.

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?

I have my own matches and sulphur, and I'll make my own hell.

Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

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.