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 you,
If you can wait and not be tired by 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
imposters 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 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 too 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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