Rudyard Kipling on Women

“Look at young Davies makin' an ass of himself over mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be his mother!”

“What is a woman that you forsake her, And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, To go with the old grey Widow-maker?”

“When you get to a man in the case, They're like as a row of pins— For the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady Are sisters under their skins!”

“’Tisn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just It. Some women’ll stay in a man’s memory if they once walked down a street.”

“But I consort with long-haired things In velvet collar-rolls, Who talk about the Aims of Art, And ‘theories’ and ‘goals’, And moo and coo with women-folk About their blessed souls.”

“A Nation spoke to a Nation, A Queen sent word to a Throne: 'Daughter am I in my mother's house, But mistress in my own. The gates are mine to open, As the gates are mine to close, And I set my house in order,' Said our Lady of the Snows.”

“When the Hymalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail, For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. * * * * * * So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands To some God of Abstract justice—which no woman understands. And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him. And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.”