Geburtstag: 30. Dezember 1865
Todesdatum: 18. Januar 1936
Andere Namen:ራድየርድ ክፕሊንግ,Джозеф Редьярд Киплинг
Joseph Rudyard Kipling [ˈdʒəʊzɪf ˈɹʌdjɑːd ˈkɪplɪŋ] war ein britischer Schriftsteller und Dichter. Seine bekanntesten Werke sind Das Dschungelbuch und der Roman Kim. Außerdem schrieb er Gedichte und eine Vielzahl von Kurzgeschichten. Kipling gilt als wesentlicher Vertreter der Kurzgeschichte und als hervorragender Erzähler. Seine Kinderbücher gehören zu den Klassikern des Genres. 1907 erhielt er, noch keine 42 Jahre alt, als erster englischsprachiger Schriftsteller den Literaturnobelpreis; den Rekord als jüngster Literaturnobelpreisträger hält er bis heute. Verschiedene andere Ehrungen wie die Erhebung zum Poet Laureate und in den Adelsstand lehnte er ab.
— Rudyard Kipling
zitiert u. a. im Titel des Buches »Die Wahrheit ist das erste Opfer des Krieges (Rudyard Kipling): Der Falklandkrieg im Spiegel argentinischer und britischer Tageszeitungen.« Vdm Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3639059458. Bei Kipling jedoch nicht feststellbar.
— Rudyard Kipling
Speech, quoted in The Times (February 15, 1923).
— Rudyard Kipling, Many Inventions
Context: When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.
[http://www.telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/ManyInventions/fineststory.html The Finest Story in the World] (1893).
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:—
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!
In the Neolithic Age, Stanza 5 (1895).
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: p>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.</p
The Law of the Jungle, Stanzas 1 and 2.
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.
"Fiction", speech to the Royal Society of Literature, June 1926; published in Writings on Writing: Rudyard Kipling (1996), ed. Sandra Kemp and Lisa Lewis, [http://books.google.com/books?id=-AQStA5QMjwC&q=%22elder+sister%22&pg=PA80 p. 80]
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
A Dead Statesman
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings, Stanza 1 (1919).
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
For All We Have and Are, Stanza 4.
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!—
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
The Ballad of East and West (1889).
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: 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!
Stanza 4.
— Rudyard Kipling
Context: 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!
Stanza 4.
