Rudyard Kipling - biography

“It’s clever, but is it Art?”

“Once there was The People - Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People, and it made a hell of earth!
Earth arose and crushed it.  Listen, oh, ye slain!
Once there was The People - it shall never be again! ”

“Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told anyone how I was being treated.  Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.”

“I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago...  I urgently desire never to see it again.  It is inhabited by savages.”

“And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves ‘It’s pretty, but is it Art?’”

“We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”

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

“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”

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

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”

“There is no sin greater than ignorance.”

“There’s no jealousy in the grave. ”

“Heaven grant us patience with a man in love.”

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

“I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. ”

“An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.”

“If I were dammed of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, mother o’ mine o mother o’ mine.”

“If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!  I know whose love would follow me still Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!”

“Borrow trouble for yourself, if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbours.”

“San Francisco is a mad city - inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.”

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

“A people always ends by resembling its shadow.”

“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.”

“A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.”

“All the people like us are we, and everyone else is They.”

“And that is called paying the Dane-geld; but we’ve proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.”

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

“Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

“Every woman knows all about everything. ”

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

“Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run.”

“For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

“For the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one.”

“Funny how the new things are the old things. ”

“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

“He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.”

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And you’ll be a Man, my son!”

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”

“If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you.  .  .  .  The world will be yours and everything in it, what’s more, you’ll be a man, my son. ”

“Never look backwards or you’ll fall down the stairs.”

“Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets.”

“Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.”

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”

“The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.”

“There’s nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going. ”

“They copied all they could follow
but they couldn’t copy my mind
so I left them sweating and stealing
a year and a half behind.”

Rudyard Kipling contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
Without Benefit of Clergy (1921)
Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (1922)
Captains Courageous (1937)
Elephant Boy (1937)
Wee Willie Winkie (1937)
The Light That Failed (1939)
Jungle Book (1942)
Kim (1950)
Soldiers Three (1951)
The Jungle Book (1967)
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
The Jungle Book (1994)
The Second Jungle Book: Mowgli & Baloo (1997)
The Jungle Book 2 (2003)