If
If
you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on
you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their
doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in
lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk
too wise:
If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just
the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a
trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of
pitch-and-toss,
and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about
your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after
they are gone,
and so hold on when there is nothing in you. Except the will, which says to them: "hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings nor lose
the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but
none to much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance
run,
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it, and, which is more, you'll be a
man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
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