Context

Remember those "if-then" logic problems from your math class's last probability unit?

(Sorry if that brings up bad memories.)

Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "If" works a lot like those logic problems—especially when you get to its closing lines.

With these lines, we finally learn the ending clause of the speaker's drawn out "if-then" statement.

Seriously, the guy goes on for twenty-eight lines.

Where you've heard it

This final piece of advice is a carpe diem sorta deal. A minute is a very unforgiving thing, after all. It's short, unchanging, and, worst of all, as non-refundable—just like those Arby's chili cheese fries we ate an hour ago and wish we could take back.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

If you say this, you're (1) assuming that becoming a man (said in our best Old Spice narrator voice)—whatever that means—is better than having dominion over the earth, and (2) offering a long list of life instructions that would be virtue-ally (see what we did there) impossible to follow.

But it's nice and rhyme-y, so maybe we should dock a few points. Who doesn't like quoting poetry with ABAB rhyme schemes?