Rudyard Kipling

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came, And he told me in a vision of the night:—
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!

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.

Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need.

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.

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.

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”

"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."

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

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

You must learn to forgive a man when he's in love. He's always a nuisance.

A Nation spoke to a Nation,
A Queen sent word to a Throne:
‘Daughter am I in my mother's house,
But mistress in my own.
The gates are mine to open,
As the gates are mine to close,
And I set my house in order,'
Said our Lady of the Snows.

(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.

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

We and They, Stanza 1.

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;!