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Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Music: Oasis - Amanda Palmer
If you know me, you'll know that I've never been one for poems. I've just never understood them, and never cared for them. But recently I came across one by accident, and I love it so much I printed it out and stuck it on my wall. I really envy those with such a lovely gift of words - and not the poser kinds that blog bombastic words to show off their intellect.
Youth
By Samuel Ullman
Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind.
It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees.
It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease.
This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty.
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 are the quick equivalents of the
long years that bow the head and turn
the growing spirit back to dust. Whether 70 or 16, there is, in every being’s heart the love of
wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars, and the star-like
things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events,
the unfailing childlike appetite for “What Next?” 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 all the wires are 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.
2:21 PM
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I'm Justine. When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.