Top 400 Rudyard Kipling Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The motto of all the mongoose family is, “Run and find out,” and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.”

— Rudyard Kipling

52. “Both triumph and disaster are impostors.”

— Rudyard Kipling

53. “I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”

— Rudyard Kipling

54. “And what should they know of England who only England know?”

— Rudyard Kipling

55. “When the Man waked up he said, ‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’ And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.’”

— Rudyard Kipling

56. “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”

— Rudyard Kipling

57. “A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, Manling.”

— Rudyard Kipling

58. “Believe the best of everybody.”

— Rudyard Kipling

59. “And the end of the fight is 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

60. “The Guns, Thank God, The Guns...”

— Rudyard Kipling

61. “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

62. “Cat said, ‘I am not a friend, and I am not a Servant. I am the Cat who walks by himself, and I wish to come into your Cave.’”

— Rudyard Kipling

63. “When a crew and a captain understand each other to the core, it takes a gale, and more than a gale, to put their ship ashore.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

65. “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two imposters just the same... If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you... If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run... you’ll be a Man, my son!”

— Rudyard Kipling

66. “What stands if freedom fall?”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

68. “War is an ill thing, as I surely know. But ’twould be an ill world for weaponless dreamers if evil men were not now and then slain.”

— Rudyard Kipling

69. “I’ve just read that I am dead. Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.”

— Rudyard Kipling

70. “Each dog barks in his own yard!”

— Rudyard Kipling

71. “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

72. “Funny how the new things are the old things.”

— Rudyard Kipling

73. “Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”

— Rudyard Kipling

74. “Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges – Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!”

— Rudyard Kipling

75. “Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget – lest we forget!”

— Rudyard Kipling

76. “There is no sin greater than ignorance.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

78. “If you do not get what you want, it is a sure sign that you did not seriously want it.”

— Rudyard Kipling

79. “When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.”

— Rudyard Kipling

80. “Four things greater than all things are Women and horses and power and War.”

— Rudyard Kipling

81. “This is Burma and it is unlike any land you know about.”

— Rudyard Kipling

82. “Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work.”

— Rudyard Kipling

83. “Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

85. “Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously – the midday sun always excepted.”

— Rudyard Kipling

86. “The tumalt and shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heat. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget.”

— Rudyard Kipling

87. “The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky The deer to the wholesome wold; And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid, As it was in the days of old.”

— Rudyard Kipling

88. “When the Hymalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

90. “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

91. “There aren’t twelve-hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don’t care.”

— Rudyard Kipling

92. “Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees, So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!”

— Rudyard Kipling

93. “Teach us delight in simple things, and mirth that has no bitter springs.”

— Rudyard Kipling

94. “If the aunt of the vicar has never touched liquor, watch out when she finds the Champagne.”

— Rudyard Kipling

95. “My heart is heavy with the things I do not understand.”

— Rudyard Kipling

96. “Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing ‘Oh how wonderful’ and sitting in the shade, While better men than we go out, and start their working lives By grubbing weeds from garden paths with broken dinner knives.”

— Rudyard Kipling

97. “You must learn to forgive a man when he’s in love. He’s always a nuisance.”

— Rudyard Kipling

98. “No one thinks of winter when the grass is green.”

— Rudyard Kipling

99. “Politicians. Little Tin Gods on Wheels.”

— Rudyard Kipling

100. “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