Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too If you can wait and not be tired by waiting Or being lied about don't deal in lies Or being hated don't give away to hating And yet don't look too good nor talk to wise If you can dream - and not make dreams your master If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss And lose and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss . . . If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you If all men count with you but none too much 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 - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

There was a small boy of Quebec Who was buried in snow to the neck: When they said 'Are you friz?' He replied 'Yes I is - But we don't call this cold in Quebec!'

It's clever but is it art?

They're hangin' Danny Deever in the morning!

One can__ prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person.

I always try to believe the best of everybody -it saves so much trouble.

Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Private Mulvaney is wholly ignorant of his strength.

A thin grey fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.

Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously - the mid-day sun always excepted. Too much work and too much energy kill a man as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much drink. Flirtation does not matter, because every one is being transferred, and either you or she leave the station and never return. Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output, and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. Sickness does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and if you die, another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between your death and burial. Nothing matters except Home-furlough and acting allowances, and these only because they are scarce. It is a slack country, where all men work with imperfect instruments, and the wisest thing is to escape as soon as you ever can to some place where amusement is amusement and a reputation worth the having.

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges -- Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

To hear is one thing, to know is another.

What is a woman that you forsake herAnd the hearth fire and the home acreTo go with that old grey widow-maker?

A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.

Barbarians are all alike... sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman says.

It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish- the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, an investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It was another perfect day - soft, mild and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.

O it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and Tommy 'ow's your soul/But it's thin red line of heroes when the drums begin to roll.

At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.

Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.