Rudyard Kipling Quotes

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.

Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book , Kim , and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" . His poems include "Mandalay" , "Gunga Din" , "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" , "The White Man's Burden" , and "If—" . He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature, and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".

Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.

Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell saw Kipling as "a jingo imperialist", explaining that he was "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting". Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "[Kipling] is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."

✵ 30. December 1865 – 18. January 1936   •   Other names Джозеф Редьярд Киплинг, ራድየርድ ክፕሊንግ
Rudyard Kipling photo

Works

Barrack-Room Ballads
Barrack-Room Ballads
Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
The Second Jungle Book
The Second Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed
The Light That Failed
Rudyard Kipling
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Just So Stories
Just So Stories
Rudyard Kipling
Life's Handicap
Rudyard Kipling
Recessional
Recessional
Rudyard Kipling
Soldiers Three
Rudyard Kipling
Many Inventions
Many Inventions
Rudyard Kipling
The Man Who Was
Rudyard Kipling
The Bell Buoy
Rudyard Kipling
The Betrothed
Rudyard Kipling
The Story of the Gadsbys
Rudyard Kipling
The White Man's Burden
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling: 200   quotes 28   likes

Famous Rudyard Kipling Quotes

“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”

The Finest Story in the World http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ManyInventions/fineststory.html (1893).
Other works
Source: Many Inventions
Context: When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you’ll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

Often misattributed to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Source: As quoted from “Interview with an Immoral,” Arthur Gordon, Reader’s Digest (July 1959). Reprinted in the Kipling Society journal, “Six Hours with Rudyard Kipling”, Vol. XXXIV. No. 162 (June, 1967) pp. 5-8. Interview took place in June, 1935 https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pdf/KJ162.pdf
Context: Looking back, I think he knew that in my innocence I was eager to love everything and please everybody, and he was trying to warn me not to lose my own identity in the process. Time after time he came back to this theme. " The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

Rudyard Kipling Quotes about God

“Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!”

The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
Other works
Context: But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

“God help us for we knew the worst too young.”

Source: The Light That Failed

Rudyard Kipling Quotes about men

Rudyard Kipling: Trending quotes

“No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.”

For All We Have and Are, Stanza 4.
Other works
Context: No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?

Rudyard Kipling Quotes

“There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid”

The Long Trail http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/volumeXI/longtrail.html, Stanza 5.
Other works
Context: There be triple ways to take, of the eagle or the snake,
Or the way of a man with a maid;
But the fairest way to me is a ship's upon the sea
In the heel of the North-East Trade.

“I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.”

A Dead Statesman
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)
Context: I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch”

Stanza 4.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)
Context: If you can talk with crowds 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 sixty 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!

“As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.”

The Gods of the Copybook Headings, Stanza 1 (1919).
Other works
Context: As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

“We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!”

The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
Other works
Context: But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

“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.”

The Law of the Jungle, Stanzas 1 and 2.
The Second Jungle Book (1895)
Context: p>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.</p

“Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.”

"Fiction", speech to the Royal Society of Literature, June 1926; published in Writings on Writing: Rudyard Kipling (1996), ed. Sandra Kemp and Lisa Lewis, p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=-AQStA5QMjwC&q=%22elder+sister%22&pg=PA80
Other works

“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;”

The Ballad of East and West (1889).
Other works
Context: Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
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, though they come from the ends of the earth!

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty 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!”

Stanza 4.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)
Context: If you can talk with crowds 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 sixty 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!

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

The Law of the Jungle, Stanzas 1 and 2.
The Second Jungle Book (1895)
Source: The Jungle Book
Context: p>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.</p

“I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”

The Cat that Walked by Himself.
Just So Stories (1902)
Source: The Cat That Walked By Himself

“I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

Speech, quoted in The Times (February 15, 1923).
Other works
Variant: Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

“For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high.”

The Courting of Dinah Shadd (1890).
Other works

“For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

The Female of the Species, Stanza 1 (1911).
Other works
Variant: The glory of the garden lies in more than meets the eye.

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

Other works
Variant: Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.

“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.”

Stanza 1.
The Second Jungle Book (1895), If— (1896)
Source: If: A Father's Advice to His Son
Context: 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;
If you can wait and not be tired by 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?”

The Conundrum of the Workshops, Stanza 1 (1890).
Other works
Source: The Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses
Context: When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It's pretty, but is it Art?”

“We be of one blood, ye and I.”

Kaa's Hunting.
The Jungle Book (1894)
Source: The Jungle Books

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