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Rudyard Kipling

This week’s quotations

From his three hundred and fifty stories and nine hundred poems Kipling has contributed more familiar quotations to our language than anyone since Shakespeare. Here’s another group of three for you to identify …

  1. There were long stretches of smooth-worn rock running for miles, exactly fitted to make seal-nurseries, and there were playgrounds of hard sand sloping inland behind them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and long grass to roll in, and sand-dunes to climb up and down; and, best of all, Kotick knew by the feel of the water, which never deceives a true Sea Catch, that no men had ever come there.

  2. The sky above them was an intense velvety black, changing to bands of Indian red on the horizon, where the great stars burned like street-lamps. From time to time a greenish wave of the Northern Lights would roll across the hollow of the high heavens, flick like a flag, and disappear; or a meteor would crackle from darkness to darkness.

  3. Thirty below freezing! It was inconceivable till one stepped out into it at midnight, and the first shock of that clear, still air … But for the jingle of the sleigh-bells the ride might have taken place in a dream, for there was no sound of hoofs upon the snow, the runners sighed a little now and again as they glided over an inequality, and all the sheeted hills round about were as dumb as death.

Here are the sources of these extracts

Past Newsletters

 

Newsletters are sent by e-mail to members four weeks before each Society meeting, with details of that meeting and other events, reports on past events, and articles on subjects large and small. Past newsletters are available below, each with an item of particular interest highlighted.

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