Article: Youth
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 temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. 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 spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite for 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 man 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’ve grown old, even at twenty. But as long as your aerials are up to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.
Vocabulary
- supple: adj 敏捷的，灵活的 the supple grace of the dancer
- vigo(u)r: noun (of person)精力 (of action)力量; (health)强壮
- temperamental: adj 喜怒无常的；时好时坏的，性能不稳定的；性格上的
- timidity: noun 胆怯，羞怯
- enthusiasm: noun 热情
- unfailing: adj 不懈的，永久的，一贯的
- aerial: adj 空中的，架空的，aerial roots; noun 天线， satellite aerial
- cynicism: noun 愤世嫉俗
- pessimism: noun 悲观情绪 antonym: optimism