Youth
Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips, and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.
Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart a love of wonder; the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts; the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next, and the joy in the game of life.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young 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 messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite - so long are you young. When the wires are all down and the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then are you grown old, indeed!
by Samuel Ullman: ‘Youth’ as published in Jane Manner: “The Silver Treasury: “Prose and Verse for Every Mood” (1934), pages 323 and 324
Samuel Ullman was born on 13 April 1840 in Hechingen, Hohenzollern, Germany. In 1851, he immigrated with his family to the United States of America. He became a shopkeeper, a member of the Birmingham board of education, a president and lay rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, an essayist, and a poet. Samuel Ullman passed on at 83 years of age on 21 March 1924 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America.
Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips, and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.
Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart a love of wonder; the sweet amazement at the stars and starlike things and thoughts; the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what comes next, and the joy in the game of life.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young 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 messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, and power from the earth, from men and from the Infinite - so long are you young. When the wires are all down and the central places of your heart are covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then are you grown old, indeed!
by Samuel Ullman: ‘Youth’ as published in Jane Manner: “The Silver Treasury: “Prose and Verse for Every Mood” (1934), pages 323 and 324
Samuel Ullman was born on 13 April 1840 in Hechingen, Hohenzollern, Germany. In 1851, he immigrated with his family to the United States of America. He became a shopkeeper, a member of the Birmingham board of education, a president and lay rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, an essayist, and a poet. Samuel Ullman passed on at 83 years of age on 21 March 1924 in Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America.
