原文
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 unfailing
childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
You
are as young 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 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 God have mercy on your soul.
|
Given to Mac Arthur
some years ago by John |