Thing's

youth 

— 

youth is not a time of life — it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over limidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. nobody grows old merely by living a number of years; people years wrinkle away 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 undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what’s next, and the joy and 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. so long as your hearts receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from the infinite, so long as you are 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 g-d have mercy on your soul.

—anonymous