If!

If you can keep you 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 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 talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neigher 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!”
Excerpt from the poem “If,” by British author and poet
Rudyard Kipling