IF - Rudyard Kipling

This poem is considered one of the most inspirational guidelines on how to live and act with integrity and develop a winning strategy throughout life, and the poem has garnered much attention in popular culture. The 4 stanzas each deal with different life situations and the best way to overcome the obstacles presented -- and these lines in particular, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.”, hang in the tennis player’s entrance at Centre Court Wimbledon in England. They are meant to inspire the players to maintain a good attitude-- win or lose. While Kipling wrote poetry, novels, and articles, he is most notably known for his collection of short stories called The Jungle Book, which he wrote in 1894. A British writer, Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. ( ~ Summary by Michele Fry)