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 if the will, a quality if 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 often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20.
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, self-
distrust bows the heart and turns the spirt back to dust.
Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonders, the unfailing
appetite for what's next and they 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, courage
and power from man and form and from the infinite, so long as you are young.
When your aerials are down, and your spirt is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of
pessimism, then you've grown old, even at 20; but as long as your aerials are up, to catch
waves of optimism, there's hope you may die young at 80.