Rudyard Kipling

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; but we've proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.

— Rudyard Kipling

Borrow trouble for yourself, if that's your nature, but don't lend it to your neighbors.

— Rudyard Kipling

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 and go to your gawd like a soldier.

— Rudyard Kipling

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?

— Rudyard Kipling

A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.

— Rudyard Kipling

Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.

— Rudyard Kipling

The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.

— Rudyard Kipling

Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, and be merry as the custom of our caste; for if faint and forced the laughter, and if sadness follow after, we are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

— Rudyard Kipling

Gentleman-rankers out on the spree, damned from here to Eternity.

— Rudyard Kipling

Words are the most powerful drugs used by mankind.

— Rudyard Kipling

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.

— Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden -- send forth the best ye breed -- go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need.

— Rudyard Kipling

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.

— Rudyard Kipling

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.

— Rudyard Kipling

All we have of freedom -- all we use or know -- this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.

— Rudyard Kipling

There rise her timeless capitals of empires daily born, whose plinths are laid at midnight and whose streets are packed at morn; and here come tired youths and maids that feign to love or sin in tones like rusty razor blades to tunes like smitten tin.

— Rudyard Kipling

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.

— Rudyard Kipling

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

— Rudyard Kipling

I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.

— Rudyard Kipling

A man's mind is wont to tell him more than seven watchmen sitting in a tower.

— Rudyard Kipling

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

— Rudyard Kipling

Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.

— Rudyard Kipling

All the people like us are We, and everyone else is They.

— Rudyard Kipling

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they have gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you. Except the Will which says to them; Hold on!

— Rudyard Kipling

God gives all men all earth to love, but since man's heart is small, ordains for each one spot shall prove belov?d over all.

— Rudyard Kipling

Never praise a sister to a sister in the hope of your compliments reaching he proper ears.

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, they arrive at their conclusions -- largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; but sometimes in a smoking room, one learns why things were done.

— Rudyard Kipling

For the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one.

— Rudyard Kipling

Tis beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just IT. Some women will stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street.

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

Oh, its Tommy this, an Tommy that, an Tommy, go away;But its Thank you, Mister Atkins, when the band begins to playThe band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,Oh, its Thank you, Mister Atkins, when the band begins to play.

— Rudyard Kipling

A Nation spoke to a Nation,A Queen sent word to a Throne:Daughter am I in my mothers 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.

— Rudyard Kipling

Four things greater than all things are,Women and Horses and Power and War.

— Rudyard Kipling

There's no jealousy in the grave.

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out. We quarrelled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot, And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

— Rudyard Kipling

And we all praise famous men--Ancients of the College; For they taught us common sense--Tried to teach us common sense--Truth and God's Own Common Sense Which is more than knowledge!

— Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs—and blaming it on you.

— Rudyard Kipling

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same.

— Rudyard Kipling