Rudyard Kipling Quotes

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

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.

"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."

He did his best to interest the girl in himself—that is to say, his work—and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear interested in, what behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's Wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. Men have married on that sort of error before now.

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

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?”

A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition

[T]he proper way to handle 'em is not by looking on 'em `as excitable masses of barbarism' (I speak for the Punjab only) or the `down trodden millions of Ind groaning under the heel of an alien and unsympathetic despotism,' but as men with a language of their own which it is your business to understand; and proverbs which it is your business to quote (this is a land of proverbs) and byewords and allusions which it is your business to master; and feelings which it is your business to enter into and sympathise with.

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

Men and women may sometimes, after great effort, achieve a creditable lie; but the house, which is their temple, cannot say anything save the truth of those who have lived in it.

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!

The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds—
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
But, oh, the little cargo-boats, that sail the wet seas roun',
They're just the same as you an' me a-plyin' up an' down!

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

We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead.