The motto of all the mongoose family is, “Run and find out,” and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose.
You’ll be beaten for this in the morning; but I may as well give you something on account now.
You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales Are bad for baby seals. Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can’t be wrong. Child of the Open Sea!
The victory is only a matter of quickness of eye and quickness of foot–snake’s blow against mongoose’s jump–and as no eye can follow the motion of a snake’s head when it strikes, this makes things much more wonderful than any magic herb.
Tabaqui, more than any one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature.
H’sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night,” said Mother Wolf; “it is Man.” The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to roll from every quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders wood-cutters, and gipsies sleeping in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.
To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with teaching the peacock to sing,’ said the hakim. ‘True courtesy,’ Kim echoed, ’is very often inattention.
One view called me to another; one hill top to its fellow, half across the country, and since I could answer at no more trouble than the snapping forward of a lever, I let the country flow under my wheels.
Waingunga, the Man Pack have.
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat these two imposters just the same... If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you... If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run... you’ll be a Man, my son!
What am I? Mussalman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist? That is a hard nut.’ ‘Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt be damned. So says my Law – or I think it does. But thou art also my Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart.
It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to judgment Day, Be gentle when ‘the heathen’ pray To Buddha at Kamakura!
I say in my heart the Faiths are like the horses. Each has merit in its own country.
Friend of all the World,’ said Mahbub, pushing over the pipe for the boy to clean, ‘I have met many men, women, and boys, and not a few Sahibs. I have never in all my days met such an imp as thou art.’ ‘And why? When I always tell thee the truth.’ ‘Perhaps the very reason, for this is a world of danger to honest men.
Returning, it was noticeable, as his friend the Seeker pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a while to mourn the loss of his River, or to draw wondrous pictures of the Wheel of Life, but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom of a certain mysterious chela whom no man of the temple had ever seen.
Most true is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of women that all plans come to ruin and we lie out in dawning with our throats cut.
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.
There is no pride,’ said the lama, after a pause, ’there is no pride among such as follow the Middle Way.
Bagheera told him that he must never touch cattle because he had been bought into the Pack at the price of a bull’s life.
Low-caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not? Afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offence. Moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he does not tread the way of deliverance.’ He halted at a little runlet among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank.