A people always ends by resembling its shadow.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Nations, Nationality, Nationalism, Nation
Savings represent much more than mere money value. They are the proof that the saver is worth something in himself. Any fool can waste; any fool can muddle; but it takes something more of a man to save and the more he saves the more of a man he makes of himself. Waste and extravagance unsettle a man’s mind for every crisis; thrift, which means some form of self-restraint, steadies it.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Wealth
Meddling with another man’s folly is always thankless work.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Problems
Four things greater than all things are, Women and Horses and Power and War.
—Rudyard Kipling
All we have of freedom—all we use or know—this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Freedom
Daughter am I in my mother’s house;
But mistress in my own.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Perspective
Pleasant the snaffle of courtship, improving the manners and carriage; but the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible throw bit of Marriage.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Marriage
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
Topics: Hollywood
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat these two imposters just the same; You’ll be a man my son.
—Rudyard Kipling
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Mistakes, Excuses, Failure, Failures
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence
Never praise a sister to a sister in the hope of your compliments reaching he proper ears.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Praise
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Insanity
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
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing:—“Oh, how beautiful!” and sitting in the shade.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Gardening
Until thy feet have trod the Road
Advise not wayside folk,
Nor till thy back has borne the Load
Break in upon the broke.
Chase not with undesired largesse
Of sympathy the heart
Which, knowing her own bitterness,
Presumes to dwell apart.
Employ not that glad hand to raise
The God-forgotten head
To Heaven and all the neighbours’ gaze—
Cover thy mouth instead.
The quivering chin, the bitten lip,
The cold and sweating brow,
Later may yearn for fellowship—
Not now, you ass, not now!
Time, not thy ne’er so timely speech,
Life, not thy views thereon,
Shall furnish or deny to each
His consolation.
Or, if impelled to interfere,
Exhort, uplift, advise,
Lend not a base, betraying ear
To all the victim’s cries.
Only the Lord can understand,
When those first pangs begin,
How much is reflex action and
How much is really sin.
E’en from good words thyself refrain,
And tremblingly admit
There is no anodyne for pain
Except the shock of it.
So, when thine own dark hour shall fall,
Unchallenged canst thou say:
I never worried you at all,
For God’s sake go away!
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Advice
There was a small boy of Quebec
Who was buried in snow to his neck
When they said, “Are you friz?”
He replied, “Yes, I is—
But we don’t call this cold in Quebec.”
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Snow
All the money in the world is no use to a man or his country if he spends it as fast as he makes it. All he has left is his bills and the reputation for being a fool.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Money
The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth point goes; The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Animals, Advice
Borrow trouble for yourself if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Anxiety, Trouble, Attitude, Worry
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
Topics: Holidays, Christmas, Religion
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much: if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, and—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: The Present, Advice, Character
If you can wait and not be tired by 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: You’ll be a man, my son.
—Rudyard Kipling
They copied all they could copy, But they couldn’t copy my mind; And I left them sweatin’ and stealin’, A year and a half behind.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Mind
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play-
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you Mr Atkins,” when the band begins to play.
—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
Topics: Humankind, Humanity
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: History
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
Topics: Agreement
If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: War
Power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Responsibility, Media
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- J. K. Rowling English Novelist
- C. S. Lewis Irish-born Author, Scholar
- Mary Wollstonecraft English Writer, Feminist
- Doris Lessing British Novelist, Poet
- H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian
- A. A. Milne British Humorist, Children’s Writer
- Russell Hoban American Author
- Winston Churchill British Head of State
- Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell Founder of the Boy Scouts
- Shel Silverstein American Cartoonist, Author
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