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Rudyard Kipling Quotes
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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
Rudyard Kipling: 200   quotes 28   likes

Rudyard Kipling Quotes

“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 brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Young British Soldier, Stanza 13.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Women

“She read a little of it. I give her review verbatim: "Oh, your book? It's all about those how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it."”

Rudyard Kipling book Plain Tales from the Hills

Wressley of the Foreign Office.
Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

Books , Understanding , Reading

“For ‘im that doth not work must surely die;
But that's no reason man should labour all
‘Is life on one same shift—life's none so long.”

Rudyard Kipling

Sestina of the Tramp-Royal, Stanza 4 (1896).
The Seven Seas (1896)

Life

“She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.”

Rudyard Kipling

Harp Song of the Dane Women http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_harp.htm, Stanza 3 (1906).
Puck of Pook's Hill 1906

Strong , Time

“If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

Rudyard Kipling

Common Form
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)

Question

“There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
That carries no colours or crest,
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Is breaking the road for the rest.”

Rudyard Kipling

The Lost Legion, Stanza 1 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

“When the cabin port-holes are dark and green
Because of the seas outside;
When the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between)
And the steward falls into the soup-tureen,
And the trunks begin to slide;
When Nursey lies on the floor in a heap,
And Mummy tells you to let her sleep,
And you aren't waked or washed or dressed,
Why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed)
You're ‘Fifty North and Forty West!”

Rudyard Kipling book Just So Stories

How the Whale Got His Throat.
Just So Stories (1902)

Sleep , Sea

“And oft-times cometh our wise Lord God, master of every trade,
And tells them tales of His daily toil, of Edens newly made;
And they rise to their feet as He passes by, gentlemen unafraid.”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Dedication, Stanza 5.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

God , Time

“Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.”

Rudyard Kipling

Epitaphs of the War, Stanza 1.
Rewards and Fairies http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/RewardsFaries/index.html (1910)

Lie

“A scrimmage in a Border Station—
A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!”

Rudyard Kipling Arithmetic on the Frontier

Arithmetic on the Frontier, Stanza 3.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Education

“More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.”

Rudyard Kipling

The Phantom 'Rickshaw http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/PhantomRickshaw/phantomrickshaw.html (1888).
Other works

Men , World

“A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair”

Rudyard Kipling

Even as you and I!
The Vampire http://www.readprint.com/work-973/The-Vampire-Rudyard-Kipling, Stanza 1.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Fools

“This man in his own country prayed we know not to what powers.
We pray them to reward him for his bravery in ours.”

Rudyard Kipling

Hindu Sepoy in France
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)

Country

“Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again!
There's no discharge in the war!”

Rudyard Kipling

Boots, Stanza 1 (1903).
Other works

War

“It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is “Run and find out,” and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.”

Rudyard Kipling book The Jungle Book

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi http://www.gutenberg.org/files/236/236-h/236-h.htm#link2H_4_0009
The Jungle Book (1894)

World , Family

“You may talk o' gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Gunga Din, Stanza 1.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Beer , Water , Fight

“I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them.”

Rudyard Kipling

King George V's Christmas broadcast, 1932 http://www.royalinsight.gov.uk/output/Page3643.asp
Other works

Women , Men , Home , Heart

“But that's another story.”

Rudyard Kipling book Soldiers Three

Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White (1888).
Other works

“When you get to a man in the case,
They're like as a row of pins -
For the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins! ”

Rudyard Kipling
Sister

“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.”

Rudyard Kipling

The Finest Story in the World http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ManyInventions/fineststory.html (1893).
Other works

Time

“Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,
We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good.”

Rudyard Kipling

The Lesson, Stanza 1 (1899-1902).
Other works

Business , People

“There is no middle way in this war. We do not doubt our ultimate victory any more than we doubt the justice of our cause.It is not conceivable that we should fail, for if we fail the lights of freedom go out over the whole world. They may glimmer for a little in the western hemisphere,but a Germany dominating half the world by sea and land will most certainly extinguish them in every quarter where they have hitherto shone upon mankind, so that even the traditions of freedom will pass out of remembrance. If we do our duty we shall not fail.”

Rudyard Kipling
Justice , Freedom , Light , War

“There are only two divisions in the world to-day — human beings and Germans. And the German knows it. Human beings have long ago sickened of him and everything connected with him,of all he does, says, thinks and believes.”

Rudyard Kipling

Speech at Southport, June 22, 1915. Quoted in The New York Times Current History, Volume 2; Volume 4. New York Times Company, 1917. Also quoted in Paul Piazza, Christopher Isherwood: Myth and Anti-Myth. Columbia Univesity Press, 2010 (p.217).

World , Thinking

“There is none like to me!”

Rudyard Kipling book The Jungle Book

says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.
Kaa's hunting.
The Jungle Book (1894)

“Very many Americans have an offensive habit of referring to natives as `heathen.' Mahommedans and Hindus are heathen alike in their eyes.”

Rudyard Kipling

Source: From Sea to Sea vol. 2, p. 61

“Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.”

Rudyard Kipling
Money