Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was a British novelist, short-story writer, and poet. This winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1907) published more than two hundred works of poetry and prose.
Born in Bombay, India, where his father taught art, Kipling grew up in England. He returned to India and became a journalist for the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette. His experience of the diversity of life in colonial India during the glory days of the British Raj inspired his popular poems and short stories.
Kipling is well known for poems such as “If” and “Gunga Din,” and for his children’s tales, mainly The Jungle Book (1894) and Just So Stories (1902.) His support of English imperialism contributed to this popularity at first but became out of favor in the 20th century.
Kipling is regarded as one of the greatest English writers of the short story. He influenced T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell, and Jorge Luis Borges. Kipling’s autobiography, Something of Myself, remained unfinished.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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
Topics: Science, Scientists
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: you’ll be a Man, my son.
—Rudyard Kipling
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,
tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Man, Racism
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
God gives all men all earth to love, but since man’s heart is small, ordains for each one spot shall prove beloved over all.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Travel
I always prefer to believe the best of everybody — it saves so much trouble.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Faith, Tolerance, Kindness
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
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Woman
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
Topics: The Military, Navy, Army
Power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Responsibility, Media
If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you… . The world will be yours and everything in it, what’s more, you’ll be a man, my son.
—Rudyard Kipling
I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives ye led were mine.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Wine
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: One liners, Drugs, Words
The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool!
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Cleverness
What you do when you don’t have to determines what you will be when you can no longer help it.
—Rudyard Kipling
More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Work
‘Til we are built like angels, with hammer, and chisel, and pen, we will work for ourselves and a woman, for ever and ever, Amen.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Woman
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Insanity
Borrow trouble for yourself if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Anxiety, Attitude, Trouble, Worry
If you can keep you 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; You’ll be a man, my son.
—Rudyard Kipling
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
All we have of freedom—all we use or know—this our fathers bought for us, long and long ago.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Freedom
Gawd knows, and ‘E won’t split on a pal.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: God, Faith, Divinity
If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: War
A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Certainty, Intuition
Never praise a sister to a sister in the hope of your compliments reaching he proper ears.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Praise
If I was damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’mine.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Mothers
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
Teach us Delight in simple things,
And Mirth that has no bitter springs.
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Simplicity
You may have noticed that many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem
—Rudyard Kipling
Topics: Religion
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