最近有个楼盘的广告，主打60-80年代生的人群，其中一段英文，引起了我的注意，那是它点题的一段烘托气氛的文字，虽然放在一个角落里面，但是文字的光辉还是仍然能让有共鸣的人一眼难忘。
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, a quality of the imagination,
a vigor of the emotions;
it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
大意是，青春不是生命里的一段时间，而是一种精神状态;它不是肉体的丰润，而是愿望、想象与激情的张扬;是生命之泉永不干涸的象征。
你也许难以相信，这样富有活力的诗句出自当时已78岁高龄的老人－ Samuel Ullman (1840-1924)。这段文字因麦克阿瑟将军不时挂在嘴边，并装裱在他二战后驻日美军指挥所的墙上，而传遍日本，成为激励日本民众和企业家战后重建的动力来源。其影响之深远，到了1992年，一位日本企业家慕名访问了Ullman的故居，在废墟上修复并建设了以Ullman命名的博物馆。
The Samuel Ullman Museum is located at 2150 15th Avenue South, Birmingham, Alabama.
照片是Ullman的故居，绿树环绕的北美传统的民居样式下，从间隙处透过的阳光掩映着温暖的感觉，有着温馨的家的氛围是否也是老先生青春常在的秘诀？据说在每个大树掩映下都曾有过贵族的身影，而在这样的环境下走出的更多可能是将自己生命献给教育、民权、社区的精神贵族，是传递爱与和谐讯息的使者。
附原诗：
"YOUTH"
Samuel Ullman
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, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions;
it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite,
for adventure over the love of ease.
This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty.
Nobody grows old merely by a number of years.
We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder,
the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living.
In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station;
so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power
from men and from the infinite,
so long are you young.
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 twenty, but as long as your aerials are up,
to catch the waves of optimism,
there is hope you may die young at eighty.
