Joseph Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 - January 18, 1936) was an English short story writer, poet, and novelist. He is chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India and his stories for children. He was born in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902), Kim (1901), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888); and his poems, including "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If-" (1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift." (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A people always ends by resembling its shadow.
All gods have good points, just as have all priests.
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was like eating an egg without salt.
Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid.
Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work.
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Four things greater than all things are,-
Women and Horses and Power
and War.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
I keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I knew)
Their
names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem- for purely religious purposes, of course- to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.
More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears.
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.
The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a clever woman to manage a fool.
What you do when you don't have to, determines what you will be when you can no longer help it.
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
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
-The Young
British Soldier (1892)
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
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A. I don't know; I've never kippled.
Categories: Quotes of the day, Rudyard Kipling
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