“Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”
– Samuel Ullman
This has been one of my favorite quotes for ages. Being an
enthusiastic woman with her share of wrinkles…. it just makes me feel
good!
Copyright Beth Parker Art 2012
The Quilted Dog – 2.5″ x 3.5″ Watercolor & Sharpie ATC
It’s been a while since I have painted one of my quilted critters.
This was fun and it’s tiny. After working on brown and white signs a
lot lately, it was way fun to play with color yesterday. I did five
little ATCs to share with you this week.
The reference photo by Susan (surob) at WetCanvas was of a black dog.
Samuel Ullman
For years,
Samuel Ullman
(1840-1924) and his prose poem “Youth” have been known and admired by
the Japanese. 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.
The Samuel Ullman Museum was created to advance Ullman’s vision by
examining his civic, educational, and religious ideas and endeavors. The
museum is a facility of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and
exists through the efforts and contributions of citizens and
corporations in Japan and the United States. The Samuel Ullman Museum
provides visitors with an opportunity to explore the life of the poet
and to be inspired by his work
“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.
LOVE it!!
