Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind.
Interpretation
Youth is a mindset rather than just an age.
This quote suggests that being youthful is an attitude and a way of thinking, rather than merely a phase in life marked by age. It emphasizes that one's mindset and outlook can keep the spirit of youth alive, regardless of the physical signs of aging.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life at any age.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
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, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, have you grown old.
A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.
It's okay to lose; just don't lose the lesson.
There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool.
It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do.
Meditation speaks. It speaks in silence. It reveals. It reveals to the aspirant that matter and spirit are one, quantity and quality are one, the immanent and the transcendent are one. It reveals that life can never be the mere existence of seventy or eighty years between birth and death, but is, rather, Eternity itself.
Genuine wisdom is usually conspicuous through modesty and silence.
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