青春

青春

文/塞缪尔·厄尔曼

青春不是年龄，是心态（心境）；青春不是桃面丹唇柔膝，它是坚强的意志，恢宏的想象，积极的感情；青春是生命深泉涌流如新。

青春意味着勇锐盖过怯弱，进取压倒苟安。如此锐气，六旬男子比二十后生更为多见。年岁有加，并非垂老，理想丢弃，方堕暮年。

岁月流逝，衰微只及肌肤；热忱抛却，颓废必致灵魂。忧虑，恐惧，不自信，定使心灵沮丧，意气如灰。

无论年届花甲，拟或二八芳龄，每个人心中都有生命的欢乐，奇迹的诱惑，孩童般好奇探索之心久盛不衰。人人心中都有一部电台，只要你从外界接受美好、希望、欢乐、勇气和力量的信息，你就青春永驻，风华常存。

一旦天线下降，你的精神就会被冷漠和悲观的冰雪覆盖，玩世不恭、自暴自弃的心油然而生，即使年方二十，实已垂垂老矣。但是，只要你树起天线，捕捉乐观的信号，你就有望在八十岁时仍觉年轻。

YOUTH

Samuel Ullman

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 will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a tempera-mental 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 spring back to dust.

Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the 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, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are 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 .