Top 400 Rudyard Kipling Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Men often do their best work blind, for some one else’s sake.”

— Rudyard Kipling

352. “Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is – Obey!”

— Rudyard Kipling

353. “They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter, and all is forgotten.”

— Rudyard Kipling

354. “The big man had been wakened by the noise, and had fired both barrels of a shotgun into Nag just behind the hood.”

— Rudyard Kipling

355. “Each dog barks in his own yard! We will see what the Pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!”

— Rudyard Kipling

356. “Friend of all the World,’ said Mahbub, pushing over the pipe for the boy to clean, ‘I have met many men, women, and boys, and not a few Sahibs. I have never in all my days met such an imp as thou art.’ ‘And why? When I always tell thee the truth.’ ‘Perhaps the very reason, for this is a world of danger to honest men.”

— Rudyard Kipling

357. “By the Bull that bought me I made a promise – a little promise. Only thy coat is lacking before I keep my word.”

— Rudyard Kipling

358. “Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes, said Chuchundra, more sorrowfully than ever.”

— Rudyard Kipling

359. “His line was the jocundly-sentimental Wardour Street brand of adventure, told in a style that exactly met, but never exceeded, every expectation.”

— Rudyard Kipling

360. “His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and.”

— Rudyard Kipling

361. “What is has been. What will be is no more than a forgotten year striking backward.”

— Rudyard Kipling

362. “Mowgli stood upright – the fire-pot in his hands. Then he stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolf-like, the wolves had never told him how they hated him.”

— Rudyard Kipling

363. “Sleepest thou still, Shere Khan? Wake, oh, wake! Here come I, and the bulls are behind. Rama, the King of the Buffaloes, stamped with his foot. Waters of the Waingunga, whither went Shere Khan?”

— Rudyard Kipling

364. “O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to judgment Day, Be gentle when ‘the heathen’ pray To Buddha at Kamakura!”

— Rudyard Kipling

365. “Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color, from badger-colored veterans who could handle a buck alone, to young black three-year-olds who thought they could. The Lone Wolf had led them for a year now. He had fallen twice into a wolf-trap in his youth, and once he had been beaten and left for dead; so he knew the manners and customs of men.”

— Rudyard Kipling

366. “Sometimes Bagheera the Black Panther would come.”

— Rudyard Kipling

367. “Tabaqui, more than any one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature.”

— Rudyard Kipling

368. “This is true; we all say so.”

— Rudyard Kipling

369. “Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.”

— Rudyard Kipling

370. “But no sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinching him to make him grateful.”

— Rudyard Kipling

371. “All Pathans are not faithless – except in horseflesh.”

— Rudyard Kipling

372. “I am two Mowglis, but the hide of Shere Khan is under my feet.”

— Rudyard Kipling

373. “You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales Are bad for baby seals. Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can’t be wrong. Child of the Open Sea!”

— Rudyard Kipling

374. “Of course, Kaa could have crushed a dozen Mowglis if he had let himself go; but he played carefully, and never loosed one-tenth of his power. Ever since Mowgli was strong enough to endure a little rough handling, Kaa had taught him this game, and it suppled his limbs as nothing else could.”

— Rudyard Kipling

375. “Go, and peace go with thee. Only, another time do not meddle with my game.”

— Rudyard Kipling

376. “So this is the manling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, Manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”

— Rudyard Kipling

377. “What am I? Mussalman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist? That is a hard nut.’ ‘Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. So says my Law – or I think it does. But thou art also my Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart.”

— Rudyard Kipling

378. “We of the jungle have no dealings with them. We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go;.”

— Rudyard Kipling

379. “Low-caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not? Afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offence. Moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he does not tread the way of deliverance.’ He halted at a little runlet among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank.”

— Rudyard Kipling

380. “Cannot tell why we or they March and suffer day by day. Children of the Camp are we, Serving each in his degree; Children of the yoke and goad, Pack and harness, pad and load!”

— Rudyard Kipling

381. “I am alone on the grazing-grounds. Gray Brother, come to me! Come to me, Lone Wolf, for there is big game afoot!”

— Rudyard Kipling

382. “So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.”

— Rudyard Kipling

383. “They are very many, evil, dirty, shameless, and they desire, if they have any fixed desire, to be noticed by the Jungle People.”

— Rudyard Kipling

384. “I explained as much as I knew of the seal-cutter’s way of jadoo; but her argument was much more simple: “The magic that is always demanding gifts is no true magic,” said she.”

— Rudyard Kipling

385. “If men had not this delusion as to the ultra-importance of their own particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.”

— Rudyard Kipling

386. “He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for when wilt thou drink again? Sleep and dream of the kill.”

— Rudyard Kipling

387. “Lend me thy coat, Shere Khan. Lend me thy gay striped coat that I may go to the Council Rock.”

— Rudyard Kipling

388. “Our time is short. I shouldn’t have believed that this morning; but now things are different. Binkie, where was Moses when the light went out?’ Binkie smiled from ear to ear, as a well-bred terrier should, but made no suggestion.”

— Rudyard Kipling

389. “Most true is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans come to ruin and we lie out in dawning with our throats cut.”

— Rudyard Kipling

390. “May no ill dreams disturb my rest, Nor Powers of Darkness me molest. – Evening Hymn.”

— Rudyard Kipling

391. “To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching the peacock to sing,’ said the hakim. ‘True courtesy,’ Kim echoed, ’is very often inattention.”

— Rudyard Kipling

392. “One of these days, Strickland is going to write a little book on his experiences. That book will be worth buying; and even more, worth suppressing.”

— Rudyard Kipling

393. “Two words breathed into the stables of a certain Cavalry Regiment will bring the men out into the streets with belts and mops and bad language; but a whisper of “Fore and Aft” will bring out this regiment with rifles.”

— Rudyard Kipling

394. “With the knife – with the knife that men use – with the knife of the hunter, I will stoop down for my gift.”

— Rudyard Kipling

395. “Hsh! He is asleep. We will not wake him, for his strength is very great. The kites have come down to see it. The black ants have come up to know it. There is a great assembly in his honor.”

— Rudyard Kipling

396. “He is a man – a man – a man!” snarled the Pack; and most of the wolves began to gather round Shere Khan, whose tail was beginning to switch.”

— Rudyard Kipling

397. “Wolf Pack, ye have cast me out too. The jungle is shut to me and the village gates are shut. Why?”

— Rudyard Kipling

398. “I say in my heart the Faiths are like the horses. Each has merit in its own country.”

— Rudyard Kipling

399. “No jury, we knew, could convict a man on the criminal count on native evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees.”

— Rudyard Kipling

400. “Waters of the Waingunga, Shere Khan gives me his coat for the love that he bears me. Pull, Gray Brother! Pull, Akela! Heavy is the hide of Shere Khan.”

— Rudyard Kipling