“There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“I have seen something of this world," she said over the trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it-- those who take the strength out of a man, and those who put it back. Once I was that one, and now I am this.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“It is not a good fancy,' said the llama. 'What profit to kill men?'
Very little - as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Something I owe to the soil that grew—
More to the life that fed—
But most to Allah who gave me two
Separate sides to my head.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“For Kim did nothing with an immense success.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“No need to listen for the fall. This is the world's end.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?" His soul repeated it again and again.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“[A Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage speaks to a museum curator.]
And I come here alone. For five--seven--eighteen--forty years it was in my mind that the old Law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry....'
So it comes with all faiths.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“The meaning of my star is war.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammeh, on her old platform, opposite the old Ajaib gher, the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“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 from Kim
“An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“I follow the Law—the Most Excellent Law.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“His nickname through all the wards was ' Little Friend of all the World'; and very often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion. It was intrigue, of course.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is eternally pestered by women? There was that girl at the Akrola by the Ford; and there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecote -- not counting the others -- and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts indeed! Ho! Ho! It is almonds in the Plains!”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“and with an almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and true—solidly”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or sometimes an evil imp," said the lama, smiling slowly.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died in child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards on the ankles, and she leads men to torment.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Nosotros no nos hemos separado por completo, pero aún no ha llegado el momento de que volvamos juntos a la carretera. Ahora está adquiriendo conocimientos en otro lugar. No tenemos más remedio que esperar.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Something I owe to the soil that grew--More to the life that fed--But most to Allah who gave me two Separate sides of my head. I would go without shirt or shoes, Friends, tobacco, or bread Sooner than for an instant lose Either side of my head.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of it, more awake and more excited than anyone, chewing on a twig that he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“These be the sort" — she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed her mouth with paan — "These be the sort to oversee justice. They know the land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe, suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are worse than the pestilence. They do harm to kings.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Hearts are like horses. They come and they go against bit or spur.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“God He knows we need men more and more in the Game.”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
“Those who beg in silence starve in silence,”
― Rudyard Kipling, quote from Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Born place: in Bombay, India
Born date December 30, 1865
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“The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what’s happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination. This isn’t the violence of some guy opening fire with an Uzi in a McDonald’s and forty people are dead. The real violence that goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold.”
― George Carlin, quote from Last Words
“The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.”
― Jack Gilbert, quote from The Great Fires
“A volte capitano cose che sfuggono alla nostra comprensione. Di una crudeltà intollerabile. Ma questo non significa che dobbiamo rinchiuderci in un angolo e smettere di lottare.”
― Rebecca Serle, quote from When You Were Mine
“Every one's got their own ways of working. I know that. I give my inspectors a free hand always. Every one's got to find out for themselves what method suits them best.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Cards on the Table
“Thus the fate of entire Kingdoms often depends upon a few blockheads and irresolute men.”43”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
Blue Bloods
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Survivor
The Goldfinch
Along for the Ride
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