Youth

Youth

- 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, 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 boy 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.