Youth
Samuel Ullman
Samuel Ullman
Youth
is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter
of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions;
it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage
over
timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease.
This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty.
Nobody grows old merely by a number of years.
We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm
wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the
heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human
being's
heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of
what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center
of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long
as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and
power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is
covered with
snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown
old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the
waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.
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