YOUTH
by 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 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 wonders, the unfailing child-like 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've grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

躁起来！

亨利四世是法国历史上非常重要的一位国王，三四百年后，法国人还记得他。来听听法国的政治人物是怎么写他的吧。

三国六大家族都有着怎样的渊源呢？三国的历史，是不是就是这些家族之间的恩怨纠葛呢？

我还是来了。

在西南联大的学习生活，对汪曾祺影响至深。

还是来个真正的凡尔赛吧。

在蓝天上自由的翱翔，这是人类自古以来的梦想，在近代它才一点一点实现，这个过程是怎样的呢？