Youth- Samuel Ullman

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.