Rudyard Kipling Quotes

English writer and poet (1865–1936)

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Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, novelist and journalist, born in India. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first English language writer to receive it. He remains, over a century later, its youngest-ever recipient.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Joseph Rudyard Kipling

Alternative Names: R. Kipling • Kipling

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When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took—the same as me!

We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.
Will you never let us go?

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.

Ever the wide world over, lass,
Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
And back at the last to you.

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine.

Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed—go back with an open eye,
And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one—
And the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!

“Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
“The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die—
“The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!”
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.

Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro—
And what should they know of England who only England know?

San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose women are of a remarkable beauty.

Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid.

We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It's clever, but is it Art?”

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?”

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

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!