美文赏析 一个人何时变老 When is a man old

　　When is a man old

　　引言：

　　他一旦停止成长，他一旦对自己说“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，这都没有区别。就在那一天，他开始变老。

　　"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 people are "old fogies at twenty-five". He 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 minute 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."

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