Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind. Nobody grows old merely by living several years; People grow old only by deserting their ideals. 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. You are as young as your Faith, as old as your doubt, 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, from the infinite, so long are you young. When the heart is covered with the snow of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then I am grown old indeed, and may you Lord, have mercy on my soul. General Douglas MacArthur.