Youth by Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind,
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 adventure over love of ease.

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 long,
long years that bow the head and
turn the growing spirit back to dust.

Whether they are sixteen or seventy,
there is in every being's heart
the love of wonder,
the sweet amazement at the stars
and starlike things and thoughts,
the undaunted challenge of events,
the unfailing childlike appetite
for what is to come 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.
When the wires are all down
and all the innermost core of your heart
is covered with the snows of pessimism
and the ice of cynicism,
then you are grown old indeed.

But 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 you are young.

The Ladder of St. Augustine - By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,

      That of our vices we can frame

A ladder, if we will but tread

      Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day's events,

      That with the hour begin and end,

Our pleasures and our discontents,

      Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,

      That makes another's virtues less;

The revel of the ruddy wine,

      And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;

      The strife for triumph more than truth;

The hardening of the heart, that brings

      Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,

      That have their root in thoughts of ill;

Whatever hinders or impedes

      The action of the nobler will; —

All these must first be trampled down

      Beneath our feet, if we would gain

In the bright fields of fair renown

      The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;

      But we have feet to scale and climb

By slow degrees, by more and more,

      The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone

      That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,

When nearer seen, and better known,

      Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear

      Their solid bastions to the skies,

Are crossed by pathways, that appear

      As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept

      Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

      Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore

      With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,

We may discern — unseen before —

      A path to higher destinies,

Nor doom the irrevocable Past

      As wholly wasted, wholly vain,

If, rising on its wrecks, at last

      To something nobler we attain.