The voices / 110 fragments

Rudyard Kipling

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Archive entries

01Undated

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

02Undated

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

03Undated

Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

04Undated

All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with, except in India, where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, top-scum stuff that people call 'civilization.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

05Undated

And he grew and grew strong as a boy must grow who does not know that he is learning any lessons, and who has nothing in the world to think of except things to eat" (23).

Rudyard Kipling / quote

06Undated

Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

07Undated

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

08Undated

It is not any common earth,Water or wood or air,But Merlin’s Isle of GramaryeThat you and I will fare.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

09Undated

All good people agree, And all good people say,All nice people, like Us, are We And every one else is They:But if you cross over the sea, Instead of over the way,You may end by (think of it!) looking on We As only a sort of They!

Rudyard Kipling / quote

10Undated

If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;!

Rudyard Kipling / quote

11Undated

It seems - and who so astonished as they? - that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty of both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

12Undated

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 / quote

13Undated

God help us for we knew the worst too young.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

14Undated

One paid for one's knowledge with one's skin.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

15Undated

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow-Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest, severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes, whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance, Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and hells, and all the chances of human life.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

16Undated

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

17Undated

Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!

Rudyard Kipling / quote

18Undated

This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

19Undated

A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. 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 / quote

20Undated

One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person. If a man is keen on reading, I think he ought to open his mind to some older man who knows him and his life, and to take his advice in the matter, and above all, to discuss with him the first books that interest him.

Rudyard Kipling / quote

21Undated

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!from "Gentleman Rankers

Rudyard Kipling / quote

22Undated

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

Rudyard Kipling / quote

23Undated

Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood

Rudyard Kipling / quote

24Undated

What avail is honour or a sword against a pen?

Rudyard Kipling / quote