If

by Rudyard Kipling

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 of waiting or being lied about you, 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 have spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to, broken and stoop and build them 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 learn 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 or lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but not too much;  If you can kill the unforgiving minute within 60 seconds worth of distance running...Yours is the earth and everything that's in it and which is more - you'll be a man my son.

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