A PSALM OF LIFE

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!


RUDYARD KIPLING    1865-1936

Youth - A state of mind

"YOUTH" by 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.


For years, Samuel Ullman (1840-1924) and his prose poem "Youth" have been known and admired by the Japanese.  "Youth"was a favorite poem of General Douglas MacArthur. The poem was on the wall of  MacArthur's office in Tokyo when he became Supreme Allied Commander in Japan. In addition, he often quoted from the poem in his speeches, leading to it becoming better known in Japan than in the United States. However, both the man and his work are largely unknown in the United States, even in Birmingham where he spent the last forty years of his life in service to the community as a businessman, poet, and humanitarian.

give thought another thought

"Whatsoever things you desire when ye pray, believe that you receive them and ye shall have them." - Jesus

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is. - Saint Augustine

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. - Buddha

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts. -Charles Darwin

Think what you want. - Debra Clemente

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results. - Willie Nelson

"Indeed, for both the rich and the poor, life is dominated by an ever growing current of problems, most of which seem to have no real and lasting solution. Clearly we have not touched the deeper causes of our troubles. It is the main point of this book that the ultimate source of all these problems is in thought itself, the very thing of which our civilization is most proud, and therefore the one thing that is "hidden" because of our failure seriously to engage with its actual working in our own individual lives and in the life of society." -D. Bohm & Mark Edwards, Changing Consciousness

Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling, arising within the mind of the one praying. - Ernest Holmes

Bondage is - subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes. - W. Clement Stone

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes. - Mohandas Gandhi

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. - Mark Twain

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. - Confucius

Change your thoughts and you change your world. - Norman Vincent Peale

Your life is what your thoughts make it. - Marcus Aurelius

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius

Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit. - James Allen

The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence. Really, it's a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free. - Charles R. Swindoll

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts. - Robert H. Schuller

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. - Rene Descartes

Our life is what our thoughts make it. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him. - James Allen

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. -James Allen

To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift. - Aeschylus

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future. - Blaise Pascal

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. - Herbert Spencer

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes. - Benjamin Disraeli

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. - Hannah Arendt

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear. - Corrie Ten Boom

Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities. -Orison Swett Marden
The universe is one of God's thoughts. - Friedrich Schiller
Are we controlled by our thoughts, or are we controlling our thoughts? - Raymond Holliwell

Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. - Paracelsus

Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him. - Philip James Bailey

I don't eat junk foods and I don't think junk thoughts. - Peace Pilgrim

There are thoughts we must not think. - Friedrich Durrenmatt

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts. - Jean Rostand