YOUTH - Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind;

It is not a matter of rosy1 cheeks, red lips and supple knees;

It is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor2 of the emotions;

It is the freshness of the deep springs of life.Youth means a temperamental3 predominance4 of courage over timidity5, of the appetite6 for adventure over the love of ease.

This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty.

Nobody grows old merely7 by a number of years.

We grow old by deserting our ideals.Years may wrinkle8 the skin, but to give up enthusiasm9 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 lure10 of wonders, 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 wireless11 station;

So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite12, so long are you young.When the aerials13 are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism14 and the ice of pessimism15, then you've grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism16, there is hope you may die young at eighty.