Live with Enthusiasm

By Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life. It's a state of mind. It's a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigour of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People 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 bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether 60 or 16, there is in every being's heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike 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 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 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 cynicism, then, and only then, are you grown old indeed, and may God have mercy on your soul. "Live every day of your life as though you expect to live forever."