It is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adbenture over love of ease.
年を重ねただけでは老いない 理想を失う時に初めて老いがくる
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; peoples grow old only by deserting their ideals.
歳月は皮膚のしわを増すが 情熱を失う時に精神はしぼむ
Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the starts and the starlike things and thougths, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfilling childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
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 message of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and form the infinite so long as you are young.
When the wires are all down and all the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then you are grown old indeed and may God have mercy on your soul.