The Jungle Book quotes

Even the tiger hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature.

We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee⁠—the madness⁠—and run.

“Enter, then, and look,” said Father Wolf, stiffly; “but there is no food here.”

“

Each dog barks in his own yard!

We will see what the Pack will say to this fostering of man-cubs. The cub is mine, and to my teeth he will come in the end, O bush-tailed thieves!”

“As many times as there are nuts on that palm,” said Mowgli, who, naturally, could not count. “What of it? I am sleepy, Bagheera, and

Shere Khan is all long tail and loud talk, like Mao, the Peacock.

”

“What is the Law of the Jungle?

Strike first and then give tongue.

By thy very carelessness they know that thou art a man. But be wise. It is in my heart that when Akela misses his next kill—and at each hunt it costs him more to pin the buck—the Pack will turn against him and against thee.

“No, Little Brother. Those are only tears such as men use,” said Bagheera. “Now I know thou art a man, and a man’s cub no longer. The jungle is shut indeed to thee henceforward.

Let them fall, Mowgli; they are only tears.

” So Mowgli sat and cried as though his heart would break; and he had never cried in all his life before.

but, as Baloo said to Bagheera one day when Mowgli had been cuffed and had run off in a temper: “

A man’s cub is a man’s cub, and he must learn all the Law of the Jungle.

”

“

Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No.

That is why I teach him these things, and that is why I hit him, very softly, when he forgets.”

“

Better he should be bruised from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance

,” Baloo answered, very earnestly. “I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with the Birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack.

They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter, and all is forgotten. We of the jungle have no dealings with them.

We do not drink where the monkeys drink; we do not go where the monkeys go; we do not hunt where they hunt; we do not die where they die.

Hast thou ever heard me speak of the Bandar-log till today?”

They were always just going to have a leader and laws and customs of their own, but they never did, because their memories would not hold over from day to day, and so they settled things by making up a saying: “

What the Bandar-log think now the Jungle will think later

”; and that comforted them a great deal.

Then Kaa came straight, quickly, and anxious to kill. The fighting strength of a python is in the driving blow of his head, backed by all the strength and weight of his body.

If you can imagine a lance, or a battering-ram, or a hammer, weighing nearly half a ton driven by a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can imagine roughly what Kaa was like when he fought.

A python four or five feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know.

Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trouble, but he could not tamper with the Law, so he mumbled, “

Sorrow never stays punishment.

But remember, Bagheera, he is very little.”

“Now,” said Bagheera, “jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will go home.”

One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterward.

Mowgli laid his head down on Bagheera’s back and slept so deeply that he never waked when he was put down by Mother Wolf’s side in the home-cave.

“And that thou mayest be cast out of another pack.

Men are only men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond.

When I come down here again, I will wait for thee in the bamboos at the edge of the grazing-ground.”

“

Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is because I am a wolf.

Let us go, Akela.”

“Nay,” purred Bagheera, “that may not be. When ye are full-fed, the madness may come upon ye again. Not for nothing are ye called the Free People.

Ye fought for freedom, and it is yours. Eat it, O Wolves.

”

From a little hill called Hutchinson’s Hill you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting.

They fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries; for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men.

Their wives never came to the island until late in May or early in June, for they did not care to be torn to pieces;

They set out together across the Pacific, and Matkah showed Kotick how to sleep on his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and his little nose just out of the water.

No cradle is so comfortable as the long, rocking swell of the Pacific.

When Kotick felt his skin tingle all over, Matkah told him he was learning the “feel of the water,” and that tingly, prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he must swim hard and get away.

“Give me another season,” he said. “

Remember, Mother, it is always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach.

”

Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyes proudly.

He was not a white seal any more, but red from head to tail.

All the same he would have scorned to look at or touch one of his wounds.

“Now,” said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); “don’t frighten him, and we’ll see what he’ll do.”

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.

The motto of all the mongoose family is, “Run and find out”; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.

It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity.

The motto of all the mongoose family is, “Run and find out”

; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all round the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy’s shoulder.

Rikki-tikki was too well bred to bite or scratch, but as soon as Teddy was asleep he went off for his nightly walk round the house, and in the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the muskrat, creeping round by the wall.

Chuchundra is a brokenhearted little beast. He whimpers and cheeps all the night, trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there.

“Don’t kill me,” said Chuchundra, almost weeping. “Rikki-tikki, don’t kill me.”

But his wife was a sensible bird, and she knew that cobra’s eggs meant young cobras later on; so she flew off from the nest, and left Darzee to keep the babies warm, and continue his song about the death of Nag.

Darzee was very like a man in some ways.

She fluttered in front of Nagaina by the rubbish-heap, and cried out, “Oh, my wing is broken! The boy in the house threw a stone at me and broke it.” Then she fluttered more desperately than ever.

“Wah!” said Little Toomai, “thou art a big elephant,” and he wagged his fluffy head, quoting his father. “

The Government may pay for elephants, but they belong to us mahouts.

When thou art old, Kala Nag, there will come some rich Rajah, and he will buy thee from the Government, on account of thy size and thy manners, and then thou wilt have nothing to do but to carry gold earrings in thy ears, and …

“Of that I have my doubts,” said Petersen Sahib. “

A boy who can face a full Keddah at his age does not end in jails.

See, little one, here are four annas to spend in sweetmeats because thou hast a little head under that great thatch of hair. In time thou mayest become a hunter too.” Big Toomai scowled more than ever.

Little Toomai attended to Kala Nag’s supper, and as evening fell, wandered through the camp, unspeakably happy, in search of a tom-tom.

When an Indian child’s heart is full, he does not run about and make a noise in an irregular fashion. He sits down to a sort of revel all by himself.

And Little Toomai had been spoken to by Petersen Sahib! If he had not found what he wanted I believe he would have burst.

“Look to him if he grows restless in the night,” said Big Toomai to Little Toomai, and he went into the hut and slept. Little Toomai was just going to sleep, too, when he heard the coir string snap with a little tang, and

Kala Nag rolled out of his pickets as slowly and as silently as a cloud rolls out of the mouth of a valley.

Little Toomai pattered after him, barefooted, down the road in the moonlight, calling under his breath, “Kala Nag! Kala Nag! Take me with you, O Kala Nag!”

Then he heard a thump and a shuffle, and the booming went on. It must have lasted fully two hours, and Little Toomai ached in every nerve; but he knew by the smell of the night air that the dawn was coming.

The morning broke in one sheet of pale yellow behind the green hills, and the booming stopped with the first ray, as though the light had been an order.

Before Little Toomai had got the ringing out of his head, before even he had shifted his position, there was not an elephant in sight except Kala Nag, Pudmini, and the elephant with the rope-galls, and there was neither sign nor rustle nor whisper down …

“The child speaks truth,” said he. “All this was done last night, and I have counted seventy tracks crossing the river. See, Sahib, where Pudmini’s leg-iron cut the bark of that tree! Yes; she was there too.”

They looked at each other, and up and down, and they wondered; for the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom.

“Forty years and five,” said Machua Appa, “have I followed my lord, the elephant, but never have I heard that any child of man had seen what this child has seen. By all the Gods of the Hills, it is—what can we say?”

What never man has seen he has seen through the long night, and the favor of the elephant-folk and of the Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall become a great tracker; he shall become greater than I, even I, Machua Appa!

He shall follow the new trail, and the stale trail, and the mixed trail, with a clear eye!

He shall take no harm in the Keddah when he runs under their bellies to rope the wild tuskers; and if he slips before the feet of the charging bull-elephant that bull-elephant shall know who he is and shall not crush him. Aihai!

The screw-guns are tidy little cannon made in two pieces, that are screwed together when the time comes to use them. They are taken up mountains, anywhere that a mule can find a road, and they are very useful for fighting in rocky country.

Behind the mule there was a camel, with his big soft feet squelching and slipping in the mud, and his neck bobbing to and fro like a strayed hen’s.

Luckily, I knew enough of beast language—not wild-beast language, but camp-beast language, of course—from the natives to know what he was saying.

“Another time,” he said, “you’ll know better than to run through a mule-battery at night, shouting ‘Thieves and fire!’ Sit down, and keep your silly neck quiet.”

The camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two-foot rule, and sat down whimpering.

There was a regular beat of hoofs in the darkness, and a big troop-horse cantered up as steadily as though he were on parade, jumped a gun-tail, and landed close to the mule.

“That’s one of our recruits,” said the old mule to the troop-horse. “He’s calling for me.

Here, youngster, stop squealing; the dark never hurt anybody yet.

”

The gun-bullocks rolled their cuds, and answered both together: “The seventh yoke of the first gun of the Big Gun Battery. We were asleep when the camels came, but when we were trampled on we got up and walked away.

It is better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding.

We told your friend here that there was nothing to be afraid of, but he knew so much that he thought otherwise. Wah!”

It is better to lie quiet in the mud than to be disturbed on good bedding. We told your friend here that there was nothing to be afraid of, but he knew so much that he thought otherwise. Wah!”

“That comes of being afraid,” said Billy. “You get laughed at by gun-bullocks. I hope you like it, young ’un.”

The young mule’s teeth snapped, and I heard him say something about not being afraid of any beefy old bullock in the world; but the bullocks only clicked their horns together and went on chewing.

The young mule’s teeth snapped, and I heard him say something about not being afraid of any beefy old bullock in the world; but the bullocks only clicked their horns together and went on chewing.

“Now, don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice,” said the troop-horse.

“Anybody can be forgiven for being scared in the night, I think, if they see things they don’t understand.

“You must,” said the troop-horse. “

If you don’t trust your man, you may as well run away at once.

That’s what some of our horses do, and I don’t blame them. As I was saying, it wasn’t Dick’s fault. The man was lying on the ground, and I stretched myself not to tread on him, and he slashed up at me.

“That time or any other. Eating is always good. We eat till we are yoked up again and tug the gun back to where Two Tails is waiting for it.

Sometimes there are big guns in the city that speak back, and some of us are killed, and then there is all the more grazing for those that are left.

This is Fate—nothing but Fate. None the less, Two Tails is a great coward. That is the proper way to fight. We are brothers from Hapur. Our father was a sacred bull of Shiva. We have spoken.”

“Brumby” means wild horse without any breeding.

Imagine the feelings of Sunol if a car-horse called her a “skate,” and you can imagine how the Australian horse felt.

I saw the white of his eye glitter in the dark.

“On your hind legs!” squealed Billy. They both reared up facing each other, and I was expecting a furious fight, when a gurgly, rumbly voice called out of the darkness to the right—“Children, what are you fighting about there? Be quiet.”

Both beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor mule can bear to listen to an elephant’s voice.

“It’s Two Tails!” said the troop-horse. “I can’t stand him. A tail at each end isn’t fair!”

Both beasts dropped down with a snort of disgust, for neither horse nor mule can bear to listen to an elephant’s voice.

“It’s Two Tails!” said the troop-horse. “I can’t stand him. A tail at each end isn’t fair!”

“My feelings exactly,” said Billy, crowding into the troop-horse for company. “We’re very alike in some things.”

“You could put a whole regiment of Dicks on my back without making me feel any better.

I know just enough to be uncomfortable, and not enough to go on in spite of it.

”

If I was like my captain—he can see things inside his head before the firing begins, and he shakes all over, but he knows too much to run away—if I was like him I could pull the guns.

But if I were as wise as all that I should never be here. I should be a king in the forest, as I used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when I liked.

I haven’t had a good bath for a month.”

But if I were as wise as all that I should never be here. I should be a king in the forest, as I used to be, sleeping half the day and bathing when I liked. I haven’t had a good bath for a month.”

“That’s all very fine,” said Billy; “but giving a thing a long name doesn’t make it any better.”

“H’sh!” said the troop-horse. “I think I understand what Two Tails means.”

“I shan’t stop,” said Two Tails. “Won’t you explain that, please? Hhrrmh! Rrrt! Rrrmph! Rrrhha!” Then he stopped suddenly, and I heard a little whimper in the dark, and knew that Vixen had found me at last.

She knew as well as I did that if there is one thing in the world the elephant is more afraid of than another it is a little barking dog; so she stopped to bully Two Tails in his pickets, and yapped round his big feet.

Two Tails shuffled and squeaked. “Go away, little dog!” he said. “Don’t snuff at my ankles, or I’ll kick at you. Good little dog—nice little doggie, then! Go home, you yelping little beast! Oh, why doesn’t someone take her away?