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☆☆☆ 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, 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 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.
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