Quotes from Rudyard Kipling

I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim? His soul repeated it again and again.

Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was: O my Best Beloved, when the tame animals were wild.

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the Earth and everything in it...

The toad beneath the harrow knows Where every separate tooth-point goes ; The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad.

One man in a thousand, Solomon says. Will stick more close than a brother. And it's worth while seeking him half your days If you find him before the other. ---The Thousandth Man

Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance

One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person.

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Private Mulvaney is wholly ignorant of his strength.

I am more likely to give help than to ask it—Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it—still I should like to know.

Those who beg in silence starve in silence

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And hold on when there's nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: Hold on!

A Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage speaks to a museum curator.] And I come here alone. For five--seven--eighteen--forty years it was in my mind that the old Law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry....' So it comes with all faiths.

Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another, -- which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.

India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved.

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

The Man went to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up, combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton – the big fat blade bone – and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the first Singing Magic in the world.

Threatened men live long.

and the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die.

It isn't what you say so much. It's what you mean when you say it.

Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him.

Body and spirit, I surrendered whole, To harsh Instructors- and received a soul.