Rudyard Kipling
Overview
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (icon ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 for Literature. He was born in Bombay
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

, in the Bombay Presidency
Bombay Presidency
The Bombay Presidency was a province of British India. It was established in the 17th century as a trading post for the English East India Company, but later grew to encompass much of western and central India, as well as parts of post-partition Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula.At its greatest...

 of British India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.
Quotations

Cities and Thrones and Powers,Stand in Time's eye,Almost as long as flowers,Which daily die:But, as new buds put forthTo glad new men,Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,The Cities rise again.

s:Cities and Thrones and Powers|Cities and Thrones and Powers, Stanza 1 (1906)

Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark-Brandy for the Parson,'Baccy for the Clerk.Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by!

s:A Smuggler's Song|A Smuggler's Song

Of all the trees that grow so fair,Old England to adorn,Greater are none beneath the Sun,Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

s:A Tree Song|A Tree Song, Stanza 1 (1906)

I have eaten your bread and salt.I have drunk your water and wine.The deaths ye died I have watched besideAnd the lives ye led were mine.

s:Prelude_to_Departmental_Ditties|Prelude, Stanza 1

I have written the tale of our life For a sheltered people's mirth,In jesting guise — but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth.

Prelude Stanza 3

Call a truce, then, to our labors — let us feast with friends and neighbors,And be merry as the custom of our caste;For if “faint and forced the laughter,” and if sadness follow after,We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

s:Christmas in India|Christmas in India, Stanza 5

The toad beneath the harrow knowsExactly where each tooth point goes;The butterfly upon the roadPreaches contentment to that toad.

s:Pagett M.P.|Pagett M.P, prelude

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

s:The Betrothed (Kipling)|The Betrothed, Stanza 25

God of our fathers, known of old,Lord of our far-flung battle line,Beneath whose awful hand we holdDominion over palm and pine — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget — lest we forget!

Stanza 1

 
x
OK