“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.

　　“我害怕邻近岁末年尾”，一位友人最近对我说：“它使我意识到我正在变老。”

　　巨大的心理学家威廉?詹姆斯就曾说过，大多数人“25岁时就成了保守掉队者”。他的话是对的。大多数人25岁时就满意于他们的工作。他们已经积聚了一些他们称之为“准则”的成见，对所有新的思维封闭心灵之门;他们已经停止成长。

　　一个人一旦结束成长--不论他年纪多大--他就开端衰老。反之，真正的巨人素来不会朽迈。

　　歌德享年83岁，去世前多少年才实现《浮士德》;格莱斯顿70岁时又开始学习一门本国语;法国地理学家拉普拉斯78岁死时还在工作着。临逝世前，他大声喊道：“咱们所知的太少太少，我们所不知的太多太多。”

　　“一个人何时变老?”，从这类事例中对这个问题你已经有了真正的谜底。

　　拉普拉斯78岁逝世时依然年轻。他照旧不知足，仍旧觉得很多货色要学。

　　一个人，只要他可能坚持这种心态，只有他在回想从前的一年时可以说“我在成长”，他就仍然年青。

　　他一旦停滞成长，他一旦对本人说“我该懂的都懂了”，这个时候他的青春也就完了。他可能在25岁时死去，也可能在75岁时死去，这都不差别。就在那一天，他开始变老。

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