Youth is not a time of
life-it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will,a quality of imagination,
a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the
appetite for adventure over love ease.
No body grows only by merely
living a number of years; peoples grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years
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 the love of wonder, the sweet amazement
at the stars and the starlike things and thoughts, the undoubted challenge of
events, the unfailling childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the
game of life.
you are yang as your faith, as old as doubt ;
as
young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear;
as young as your hope, as
old as your despair.
So long as your heart receives messages of
beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from the
Infinite so long as your young.
When the wires are all down and all the
central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice
of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed and may God have mercy on your
soul.
Given to Mc carthur some years ago by John
W. Lewist is based
on a poem written by the late
Samuel Ullmann of Birmingham, Ala.
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| Samuel Ullmann の信奉者 ++..
2004/10/01(金)
19:51 [4253] |
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