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 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 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 wornout 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 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

Fill this bread

These are the words of the Teacher,a the son of David, king in Jerusalem:

“Futility of futilities,”

says the Teacher,

“futility of futilities!

Everything is futile!”

What does a man gain from all his labor,

at which he toils under the sun?

Generations come and generations go,

but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets;

it hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows southward,

then turns northward;

round and round it swirls,

ever returning on its course.

All the rivers flow into the sea,

yet the sea is never full;

to the place from which the streams come,

there again they flow.

All things are wearisome,

more than one can describe;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear content with hearing.

What has been will be again,

and what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a case where one can say,

“Look, this is new”?

It has already existed

in the ages before us.

There is no remembrance

of those who came before,

and those yet to come will not be remembered

by those who follow after.

I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid upon the sons of men to occupy them!