734 Quotes by Rudyard Kipling

I've taken my fun where I've found it, / An' now I must pay for my fun, / For the more you 'ave known o' the others / The less will you settle to one.

Before we lose the word / That bids new worlds to birth, / Needs must we loosen first the swordOf Justice upon earth / Or else all else is vain / Since life on earth began / And the spent world sinks back again / Hopeless of God and Man.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

But, in the valley of the Gauri, men / Beneath the shadow of the big new dam, / Relate a foolish legend of the flood, / Accounting for the little loss of life.

Our loves are not given but only lent, / At compound interest of cent percent. / Though it is not always the case, I believe, / That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve: / For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, / A short-time loan is as bad as along.

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

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; / And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, / But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, / Shall draw the thing as he sees It for God of Things as they are.

Five and twenty ponies, / Trotting through the dark— / Brandy for the Parson, / 'Baccy for the Clerk; / Laces for a lady, letters for a spy, / Watch the wall, my darling, while the / Gentlemen go by!

I do not look for holy saints to guide me on my way, / Or male and female devilkins to lead my feet astray. / If these are added, I rejoice---if not, I shall not mind, / So long as I have leave and choice to meet my fellow-kind. / For as we come and as we go (and deadly-soon go we!) / The people, Lord, Thy people, are good enough for me!