Youth by Samuel Ullman

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 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