Youth

Youth is a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it isa temper 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 the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite of adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living 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, doubt , self-distrust, fear and despair-----these bow the heartand turn the spirit back to dust.

Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being's heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the star like things , the undaunted challenge of events , the unfailing child-like appetite for what-next, and the joy of the game of living.

You are as young as your faith ,as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your hope, as old as your despair.

In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station , so long as it receives message of beauty , hope, courage, grandeur , and power from earth, from man and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the wires are all down, and all the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynism,then, and only then , are you grown old indeed.