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 of the the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep spring 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.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit 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 is hope you may die young at 80.
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