“i dread to come to the end of the year,said a friend to me recently, “it makes me realize i am growing old.”
william james, the great psychologist, said that most men are “old fogies at twenty-fivehe was right. most men at twenty-five are satisfied with their jobs. they have accumulated the little stock of prejudices that they call their “principles, ” and closed their minds to all new ideas; they have ceased to grow.
the minutea man ceases to grow-no matter what his years-that minute he begins to be old. on the other hand, the really great man never grows old.
goethe passed out at eighty-three, and finished his faust only a few years earlier; gladstone took up a new language when he was seventy. laplace, the astronomer, was still at work when death caught up with him at seventy-eight. he died crying, “what we know is nothing; what we do not know is immense.”
and there you have the real answer to the question, “when is a man old?”
laplace at seventy-eight died young. he was still unsatisfied, still sure that he had a lot to learn.
as long as a man can keep himself in that attitude of mind, as long as he can look back on every year and say , “i grew,” he is still young.
the minute he ceases to grow, the minute he says to himself, “i know all that i need to know,”–that day youth stops. he may be twenty-five or seventy-five, it makes no difference. on that day he begins to be old.
“我懼怕臨近歲末年尾”，一位朋友最近對我說：“它使我意識到我正在變老。”
偉大的心理學家威廉•詹姆斯就曾說過，大多數人“25歲時就成了守舊落伍者”。他的話是對的。大多數人25歲時就滿足於他們的工作。他們已經積累了一些他們稱之為“原則”的偏見，對所有新的思想關閉心靈之門；他們已經停止成長。
一個人一旦停止成長–不管他年齡多大–他就開始衰老。反之，真正的偉人從來不會衰老。
歌德享年83歲，逝世前幾年才完成《浮士德》；格萊斯頓70歲時又開始學習一門外國語；法國天文學家拉普拉斯78歲死時還在工作著。臨死前，他大聲喊道：“我們所知的太少太少，我們所不知的太多太多。”
“一個人何時變老？”，從這類事例中對這個問題你已經有了真正的答案。
拉普拉斯78歲逝世時依然年輕。他依舊不滿足，依舊感到許多東西要學。
一個人，只要他能夠保持這種心態，只要他在回首過去的一年時能夠說“我在成長”，他就依然年輕。
他一旦停止成長，他一旦對自己說“我該懂的都懂了”，這個時候他的青春也就完了。他可能在25歲時死去，也可能在75歲時死去，這都沒有區別。就在那一天，他開始變老。