“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
―Rudyard Kipling
“He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble”
― Rudyard Kipling
“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;!”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, And-which is more-you’ll be a man my son.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all i knew); Theirs names are What and Why and When And How And Where and Who.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“You must learn to forgive a man when he’s in love. He’s always a nuisance.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ and sitting in the shade.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“The world is very lovely, and it’s very horrible–and it doesn’t care about your life or mine or anything else.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim
“My heart is so tired”
― Rudyard Kipling
“War is an ill thing, as I surely know. But ‘twould be an ill world for weaponless dreamers if evil men were not now and then slain.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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!”
― Rudyard Kipling
“All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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. ”
― Rudyard Kipling
“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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”
― 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!”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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?”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“I have my own matches and sulphur, and I’ll make my own hell.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“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.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim
“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.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“(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.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“She is intensely human, and lives to look upon life.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“We be of one blood, ye and I”
― Rudyard Kipling
“TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew –
Wanted to know what the River knew,
Twenty Bridges or twenty-two,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:”
― Rudyard Kipling
“Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood”
― Rudyard Kipling