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强烈建议将该文背诵,无论英文和译文。后附的译文是我见过的译文中最美的,可谓与原文互为辉映,令人赞叹不已。如此佳作,不敢私藏,献与诸位共赏。可惜不知译作者为何人,引为撼事。我在网上还曾经看到过一些类似的译文,是某些好事者在该译文的基础上根据自己对原文的理解自作聪明地进行了一些改动,却往往词不达意,破坏了原译文的意境,犹如无瑕的白璧上非要镶一块金子,以显该人的富足,不伦不类,令人啼笑皆非,后来者慎之。
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 tempera-mental predominance of courage over timidity, of the
appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of
60 more than a boy of 20. 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 spring back to dust.
Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder,
the unfailing childlike 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 20, but as long as
your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die
young at 80. |
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