Rudyard Kipling

On Scott McClellan speaking up now and not while he was the White House press secretary

Shannon Bullock — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:33:16 +0000

“There is no need to tell more than is necessary at any one time. Besides, I did not then need money for sweetmeats.”

From Kim

On Eight Bells and the controversy of horse racing in America

Shannon Bullock — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:29:18 +0000

“The wise man knows horses are good-that there is a profit to be made from all…”

From Kim

On relations between the West and East

Shannon Bullock — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:39:12 +0000

“A Fool Lies Here…”

Now it is not good
For the Christian’s health
To hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles
And the Aryan smiles
And he wearth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight
Is tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear,
“A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.”

On the American staff sergeant who used a Quran for target practice

Shannon Bullock — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:15:18 +0000

“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.”

From Kim

On the biggest food price jump in 18 years

Shannon Bullock — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:43:35 +0000

“Those who beg in silence starve in silence.”

From Kim

On the the train quarantined in Canada after after one person died and several fell ill

Shannon Bullock — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:22:34 +0000

“Few people can afford to play Robinson Crusoe anywhere—least of all in India, where we are few in the land and very much dependent on each other’s kind offices. Dumoise was wrong in shutting himself from the world for a year, and he discovered his mistake when an epidemic of typhoid broke out in the Station in the heart of the cold weather, and his wife went down. He was a shy little man, and five days were wasted before he realised that Mrs. Dumoise was burning with something worse than simple fever, and three days more passed before he ventured to call on Mrs. Shute, the Engineer’s wife, and timidly speak about his trouble. Nearly every household in India knows that Doctors are very helpless in typhoid. The battle must be fought out between Death and the Nurses minute by minute and degree by degree. Mrs. Shute almost boxed Dumoise’s ears for what she called his ‘criminal delay,’ and went off at once to look after the poor girl. We had seven cases of typhoid in the Station that winter and, as the average of death is about one in every five cases, we felt certain that we should have to lose somebody. But all did their best. The women sat up nursing the women, and the men turned to and tended the bachelors who were down, and we wrestled with those typhoid cases for fifty-six days, and brought them through the Valley of the Shadow in triumph. But, just when we thought all was over, and were going to give a dance to celebrate the victory, little Mrs. Dumoise got a relapse and died in a week, and the Station went to the funeral. Dumoise broke down utterly at the brink of the grave, and had to be taken away.”

From “By Word of Mouth”

On the fifth anniversary of ‘Mission Accomplished’

Shannon Bullock — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:17:33 +0000

“They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide–
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour:
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their
friends,
To conform and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us–their death could not undo–
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shell we leave it unabated in its place?”

“Mesopotamia” 1917

On the speeches by Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama’s former pastor

Shannon Bullock — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:16:03 +0000

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

On the impatient subway riders who revolted by leaving a stranded train and causing more problems for Chicago public transportation officials.

Shannon Bullock — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:52:06 +0000

“I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago… I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”

On a German prosecutor charging an admitted Nazi hit man in 3 murders

Shannon Bullock — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:24:59 +0000

“The one certain note of the German character under stress, is its unfailing beastliness and its use of certain well known forms of perversion and degenergy.”

Source: Kipling by Jad Adams