Top 400 Rudyard Kipling Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail.”

— Rudyard Kipling

252. “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

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

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

255. “Hear what little Red-Eye saith: “Nag, come up and dance with death!”

— Rudyard Kipling

256. “Till the master of all good workmen shall set us to work anew.”

— Rudyard Kipling

257. “Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem, for purely religious purposes, of course, to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

259. “He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits.”

— Rudyard Kipling

260. “Never ask a man his opinion of a woman’s dress when he is desperately and abjectly in love with the wearer.”

— Rudyard Kipling

261. “I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy.”

— Rudyard Kipling

262. “As he held he closed his jaws tighter and tighter, for he made sure he would be banged to death, and, for the honor of his family, he preferred to be found with his teeth locked.”

— Rudyard Kipling

263. “Like everything else in the world, it is one man’s work.”

— Rudyard Kipling

264. “Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and quiver.”

— Rudyard Kipling

265. “But he couldn’t lie if you paid him and he’d starve before he stole.”

— Rudyard Kipling

266. “If you hit a pony over the nose at the outset of your acquaintance, he may not love you but he will take a deep interest in your movements ever afterwards.”

— Rudyard Kipling

267. “One can’t prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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268. “The American has no language, he has a dialect, slang, provincialism, accent and so forth.”

— Rudyard Kipling

269. “At the hole where he went in Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin. Hear what little Red-Eye saith: “Nag, come up and dance with death!”

— Rudyard Kipling

270. “These two things fight together in me as the snakes fight in the spring. The water comes out of my eyes; yet I laugh while it falls. Why?”

— Rudyard Kipling

271. “Do not weep; for, look you, all Desire is Illusion and a new binding upon the. wheel.”

— Rudyard Kipling

272. “Brother, thy tail hangs down behind.”

— Rudyard Kipling

273. “She is intensely human, and lives to look upon life.”

— Rudyard Kipling

274. “Thou hast been with the Monkey People – the gray apes – the people without a law – the eaters of everything.”

— Rudyard Kipling

275. “Let them fall Mowgli, they are only tears.”

— Rudyard Kipling

276. “It is better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding.”

— Rudyard Kipling

277. “Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade.”

— Rudyard Kipling

278. “Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order – never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request.”

— Rudyard Kipling

279. “But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for ourself and a woman, forever and ever, Amen.”

— Rudyard Kipling

280. “Singer and tailor am I– Doubled the joys that I know– Proud of my lilt to the sky, Proud of the house that I sew– Over and under, so weave I my music–so weave I the house that I sew.”

— Rudyard Kipling

281. “One learns more from a good scholar in a rage than from a score of lucid and laborious drudges.”

— Rudyard Kipling

282. “Mark my trail...”

— Rudyard Kipling

283. “Like the destroyer, the submarine has created its own type of officer and man with language and traditions apart from the rest of the service, and yet at the heart unchangingly of the Service.”

— Rudyard Kipling

284. “The White Seal Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas! Seal Lullaby.”

— Rudyard Kipling

285. “Hearts are like horses. They come and they go against bit or spur.”

— Rudyard Kipling

286. “The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenseless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him.”

— Rudyard Kipling

287. “A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed on his feet.”

— Rudyard Kipling

288. “Father Wolf looked on amazed. He had almost forgotten the days when he won Mother Wolf in fair fight from five other wolves, when she ran in the Pack and was not called The Demon for compliment’s sake. Shere Khan might have faced Father Wolf, but he could not stand up against Mother Wolf, for he knew that where he was she had all the advantage of the ground, and would fight to the death. So he backed out of the cave mouth growling...”

— Rudyard Kipling

289. “I am more likely to give help than to ask it” – Bagheera stretched out one paw and admired the steel-blue, ripping-chisel talons at the end of it – “still I should like to know.”

— Rudyard Kipling

290. “The American does not drink at meals as a sensible man should. Indeed, he has no meals. He stuffs for ten minutes thrice a day.”

— Rudyard Kipling

291. “Barbarians are all alike... sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman says.”

— Rudyard Kipling

292. “Otherwise, he would be far away in the jungle; tasting, touching, seeing, and feeling new things.”

— Rudyard Kipling

293. “What avail is honour or a sword against a pen?”

— Rudyard Kipling

294. “I wasted my substance, I know I did, on riotous living, so I did, but there’s nothing on record to show I did more than my betters have done.”

— Rudyard Kipling

295. “The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again.”

— Rudyard Kipling

296. “One half of my head, from the top of my skull to the cleft of my jaw, hammers, bangs, sizzles while the other half, serene and content, looks on at the agony next door.”

— Rudyard Kipling

297. “And that lame butcher would have killed him and would have run off to the Waingunga while the villagers here hunted through all our lairs in revenge!”

— Rudyard Kipling

298. “They gave him a little piece of raw meat. Rikki-tikki liked it immensely, and when it was finished he went out into the veranda and sat in the sunshine and fluffed up his fur to make it dry to the roots. Then he felt better.”

— Rudyard Kipling

299. “Who has delivered us, who? Tell me his nest and his name. Rikki, the valiant, the true, Tikki, with eyeballs of flame, Rikk-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame!”

— Rudyard Kipling

300. “Nag coiled himself down, coil by coil, round the bulge at the bottom of the water jar, and Rikki-tikki stayed still as death.”

— Rudyard Kipling