"I am emailing because I have received an enquiry from a colleague in a college in India where I spent a year studying.

They are looking for one of Rudyard Kipling's quotes that they heard once with the following description:

Apparently, he wrote a speech or poem (or whatever medium it was) after some of his friends were graduating from university. In the text, he encourages modesty to his excited friends by saying something like 'one day you will meet someone (i.e. a very great person) who will make you feel you have nothing at all'.

Have you ever come across anything like this? I cannot find anything online. If not, do you know any others who may have an idea?

Best,

Tushar"

If anyone has any ideas, would they please copy any reply they may make to: [log in to unmask]

I did wonder, in view of the suggested context of "some of his friends [who] were graduating from university" if it weren't from his Rectorial address at St. Andrews, but a cursory skip through suggests not; likewise his shorter address at University College, Dundee, made the following day; both in October 1923.  (if anyone has the time to look through both speeches with a finer tooth comb, they are both in the NRG, in A Book of Words.

Alastair Wilson