Literary Birthday – 30 December – Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born 30 December 1865, and died 18 January 1936.

Rudyard Kipling: Nine Quotes

1. For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
2. I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
3. A people always ends by resembling its shadow.
4. We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.
5. I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.
6. If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. (Life’s Handicap)
7. Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.
8. All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they.
9. This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.

Rudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist remembered for his tales of India, and his stories for children. He was born in Bombay, and is best known for The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, and Kim. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In his adult storytelling, his short stories set in India include Life’s Handicap (1891), Many Inventions (1893), The Day’s Work (1898), Actions and Reactions (1909), Debits and Credits (1926), and Limits and Renewals (1932). His poems included ‘Mandalay’, ‘Gunga Din’, and ‘If’. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Following his death in 1936, his ashes were interred at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Have a look at a young Rudyard Kipling here and read his Seven Rules for Life in London

One of his most famous poems is If.

Source for Image: Elliott & Fry, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rudyard_Kipling_(portrait).jpg
Source for poem

by Amanda Patterson

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