Youth

YOUTH
By Samuel Ullman (1840-1925)
 
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 offen 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, selfdistrust
bows the heart and turns the spirit back to
dust.
 
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 grow 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.