Youth is not a time of life-it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love ease.
Nobody grows only by merely living a number of years; peoples 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 seventy or sixteen, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the star-like things and thoughts, the undoubted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
you are young as your faith, as old as 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 as your 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.
Samuel Ullmann
この「YOUTH」は日本ではあまり馴染みの無いサミエル・ウルマンの詩ですが、読む度に襟を正されます。
1945年9月27日にヒロヒトが日比谷の占領軍総司令部にマッカーサーを訪問し、ツーショット写真を撮られた部屋の壁に掛けられていた詩が、このYOUTHであったとのこと。
マッカーサーは、友人のジョン・ルイス（コーネル大学教授）よりこの詩を贈られ、座右の銘として何時も執務室に飾っていました。しかし作詩者のサミエル・ウルマンは、当時はアメリカにおいても全く無名で、アラバマ州の人だということ以外は全く知られていなかったそうです。
また、ロバート・ケネディーがエドワード・ケネディーへの弔辞にこのウルマンの詩の一節を引用したのも有名な話ですね。
今わの際までYOUTH(真の若々しさ)を保ち、人生を全うしたいものです。