Top 400 Rudyard Kipling Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.”

— Rudyard Kipling

202. “The air was full of all the night noises that, taken together, make one big silence...”

— Rudyard Kipling

203. “Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was: O my Best Beloved, when the tame animals were wild.”

— Rudyard Kipling

204. “The Coppersmith is a bird who makes a noise exactly like the beating of a little hammer on a copper pot; and the reason he is always making it is because he is the town crier to every Indian garden, and tells all the news to everybody who cares to listen.”

— Rudyard Kipling

205. “Meddling with another man’s folly is always thankless work.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

207. “Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers.”

— Rudyard Kipling

208. “What is the moral? Who rides may read.”

— Rudyard Kipling

209. “The tiger’s roar filled the cave with thunder. Mother Wolf shook herself clear of the cubs and sprang forward, her eyes, like two green moons in the darkness, facing the blazing eyes of Shere Khan.”

— Rudyard Kipling

210. “The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth point goes.”

— Rudyard Kipling

211. “We have done with Hope and Honour. we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung; And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young!”

— Rudyard Kipling

212. “If there be good in that I wrought Thy Hand compelled it, Master, Thine – Where I have failed to meet Thy Thought I know, through Thee, the blame was mine... The depth and dream of my desire, The bitter paths wherein I stray – Thou knowest who hast made the Fire, Thou knowest who hast made the Clay.”

— Rudyard Kipling

213. “The glory of the garden lies in more than meets the eye.”

— Rudyard Kipling

214. “All gods have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people the great gray apes of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.”

— Rudyard Kipling

215. “And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.”

— Rudyard Kipling

216. “And the talk slid north, and the talk slid south With the sliding puffs from the hookah-mouth; Four things greater than all things are Women and Horses and Power and War.”

— Rudyard Kipling

217. “Still stands thine ancient sacrifice – An humble and a contrite heart.”

— Rudyard Kipling

218. “Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself. But he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls.”

— Rudyard Kipling

219. “I have my own matches and sulphur, and I’ll make my own hell.”

— Rudyard Kipling

220. “Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears.”

— Rudyard Kipling

221. “Everyone is more or less mad on one point.”

— Rudyard Kipling

222. “A people always ends by resembling its shadow.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

224. “If you give someone more than they can do, they will do it. If you give them only what they can do, they will do nothing.”

— Rudyard Kipling

225. “Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished manners;.”

— Rudyard Kipling

226. “Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him.”

— Rudyard Kipling

227. “Every woman knows all about everything.”

— Rudyard Kipling

228. “The heart of a man to the heart of a maid- Light of my tents, be fleet- Morning awaits at the end of the world, And the world is all at our feet.”

— Rudyard Kipling

229. “Remember, Bagheera loved thee,” he cried, and bounded away. At the foot of the hill he cried again long and loud, “Good hunting on a new trail, Master of the Jungle! Remember, Bagheera loved thee.”

— Rudyard Kipling

230. “If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious?”

— Rudyard Kipling

231. “Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk – as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf’s cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf’s face, and laughed.”

— Rudyard Kipling

232. “There is no gift like friendship. Remember this – when you become a young man. For your fate will turn on the first true friend you make.”

— Rudyard Kipling

233. “Let all who build beware The load, the shock, the pressure Material can bear. So, when the buckled girder Lets down the grinding span, The blame of loss, or murder, Is laid upon the man. Not on the Stuff – the Man!”

— Rudyard Kipling

234. “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

235. “The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again.”

— Rudyard Kipling

236. “Now Rann the Kite brings home the night That Mang the Bat sets free – The herds are shut in byre and hut For loosed till dawn are we. This is the hour of pride and power, Talon and tush and claw. Oh, hear the call! – Good hunting all That keep the Jungle Law!”

— Rudyard Kipling

237. “Ay, roar well,” said Bagheera, under his whiskers, “for the time will come when this naked thing will make thee roar to another tune, or I know nothing of man.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

239. “It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening.”

— Rudyard Kipling

240. “Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.”

— Rudyard Kipling

241. “An angry skipper makes an unhappy crew.”

— Rudyard Kipling

242. “Darzee was a feather-brained little fellow who could never hold more than one idea at a time in his head.”

— Rudyard Kipling

243. “And there’s never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-three.”

— Rudyard Kipling

244. “One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterward.”

— Rudyard Kipling

245. “He had forgotten the egg. It still lay on the veranda, and Nagaina came nearer and nearer to it, till at last, while Rikki-tikki was drawing breath, she caught it in her mouth, turned to the veranda steps, and flew like an arrow down the path, with Rikki-tikki behind her. When the cobra runs for her life, she goes like a whip-lash flicked across a horse’s neck.”

— Rudyard Kipling

246. “Single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.”

— Rudyard Kipling

247. “You must not forget the suspenders, Best Beloved.”

— Rudyard Kipling

248. “There’s a Legion that never was ’listed, That carries no colours or crest, But, split in a thousand detachments, Is breaking the road for the rest.”

— Rudyard Kipling

249. “When a snake misses its stroke, it never says anything or gives any sign of what it means to do next.”

— Rudyard Kipling

250. “For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high.”

— Rudyard Kipling