Top 400 Rudyard Kipling Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Alala! I have no cloth to wrap me. The kites will see that I am naked. I am ashamed to meet all these people.”

— Rudyard Kipling

402. “Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk!”

— Rudyard Kipling

403. “Men had been puffed up with pride by notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable.”

— Rudyard Kipling

404. “The Man Pack are angry. They throw stones and talk child’s talk. My mouth is bleeding. Let me run away.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

406. “The Sahibs have not all this world’s wisdom.”

— Rudyard Kipling

407. “He is not Ikki to dig holes, nor Mao, the Peacock, that he should fly. He is not Mang the Bat, to hang in the branches. Little bamboos that creak together, tell me where he ran?”

— Rudyard Kipling

408. “Returning, it was noticeable, as his friend the Seeker pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the loss of his River, or to draw wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life, but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious chela whom no man of the temple had ever seen.”

— Rudyard Kipling

409. “Then says Mrs. Hauksbee to me – she looked a trifle faded and jaded in the lamplight: “Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.”

— Rudyard Kipling

410. “Ow! He is there. Ahoo! He is there. Under the feet of Rama lies the Lame One! Up, Shere Khan! Up and kill! Here is meat; break the necks of the bulls!”

— Rudyard Kipling

411. “You’ll be beaten for this in the morning; but I may as well give you something on account now.”

— Rudyard Kipling

412. “This talk went in at one ear and out at the other, for a boy who spends his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till it actually stares him in the face. But, one year, Baloo’s words came true, and Mowgli saw all the Jungle working under the Law.”

— Rudyard Kipling

413. “If any Question why We Died Tell them because our Father’s Lied.”

— Rudyard Kipling

414. “Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew – Piggy Lew and they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.”

— Rudyard Kipling

415. “Every old ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling place of snakes, and the old summer-house was alive with cobras.”

— Rudyard Kipling

416. “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

417. “With you-to the end of the world!”

— Rudyard Kipling

418. “As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back – For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

— Rudyard Kipling

419. “Bring up the great bull-buffaloes, the blue-skinned herd-bulls with the angry eyes. Drive them to and fro as I order.”

— Rudyard Kipling

420. “Waters of the Waingunga, the Man Pack have cast me out. I did them no harm, but they were afraid of me. Why?”

— Rudyard Kipling

421. “Madden, from the pantry, rose to the crisis like a butler and a man.”

— Rudyard Kipling

422. “Here I am,” yapped Vixen, “under the gun-tail with my man. You big, blundering beast of a camel you, you upset our tent. My man’s very angry.” “Phew!” said the bullocks. “He must be white?”

— Rudyard Kipling

423. “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

424. “But say, India’s half the size of the United States. Which State are you going to?”

— Rudyard Kipling

425. “Baloo and Bagheera, for, at the pace the monkeys were going, he knew his friends would be left far behind. It was useless to look down, for he could only see the top sides of the branches, so he stared upward and saw, far away in the blue, Rann, the Kite, balancing and wheeling.”

— Rudyard Kipling

426. “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

427. “There is no pride,’ said the lama, after a pause, ’there is no pride among such as follow the Middle Way.”

— Rudyard Kipling

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

— Rudyard Kipling

429. “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

430. “Waingunga, the Man Pack have.”

— Rudyard Kipling

431. “The Viceroy possessed no name – nothing but a string of counties and two-thirds of the alphabet after them.”

— Rudyard Kipling

432. “All the jungle knows that I have killed Shere Khan. Look – look well, O Wolves!”

— Rudyard Kipling

433. “Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull’s life.”

— Rudyard Kipling

434. “To abstain from action is well – except to acquire merit.’ ‘At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action was unbefitting a Sahib.”

— Rudyard Kipling