UPSC Express

Rudyard Kipling Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all i knew); Theirs names are What and Why and When And How And Where and Who.

Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.

Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

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

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

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

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool!

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.

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?’

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

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.

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

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

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.

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

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

Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.

When the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.

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

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.

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.”

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.

I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards.

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

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

If I were dammed of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, mother o’ mine o mother o’ mine.

If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

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

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

We be of one blood, ye and I.

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

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck ’im out, the brute!” But it’s “Savior of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot.

Ave you ‘eard o’ the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on ‘er ‘ead? She ‘as ships on the foam—she ‘as millions at ‘ome, An’ she pays us poor beggars in red.

That’s the secret. ‘Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street.

Too much work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much drink

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

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Funny how the new things are the old things.

There’s no jealousy in the grave.

It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.

Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade.