優美的英文散文隨筆

時間：2022-10-05 21:38:50 隨筆

優美的英文散文隨筆

　　It is well that young men should begin at the beginning and occupy the most subordinate positions.

優美的英文散文隨筆

　　Many of the leading businessmen of Pittsburgh had a serious responsibility thrust upon them at the very threshold of their career.

　　They were introduced to the broom, and spent the first hours of their business lives sweeping out the office.

　　I notice we have janitors and janitresses now in offices, and our young men unfortunately miss that salutary branch of business education.

　　But if by chance the professional sweeper is absent any morning, the boy who has the genius of the future partner in him will not hesitate to try his hand at the broom.

　　It does not hurt the newest comer to sweep out the office if necessary.

　　I was one of those sweepers myself.

　　Assuming that you have all obtained employment and are fairly started, my advice to you is “aim high”.

　　I would not give a fig for the young man who does not already see himself the partner or the head of an important firm.

　　Do not rest content for a moment in your thoughts as head clerk, or foreman, or general manager in any concern, no matter how extensive.

　　Say to yourself, “My place is at the top.

　　” Be king in your dreams.

　　And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret: concentrate your energy, thought, and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged.

　　Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.

　　The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also.

　　They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here there, and everywhere.

　　“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” is all wrong.

　　I tell you to “put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” Look round you and take notice, men who do that not often fail.

　　It is easy to watch and carry the one basket.

　　It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country.

　　He who carries three baskets must put one on his head, which is apt to tumble and trip him up.

　　One fault of the American businessman is lack of concentration.

　　To summarize what I have said: aim for the highest; never enter a bar room; do not touch liquor, or if at all only at meals; never speculate; never indorse beyond your surplus cash fund;

make the firm’s interest yours; break orders always to save owners; concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket; expenditure always within revenue; lastly, be not impatient, for as Emerson says, “no one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourselves.”

　　譯文：

　　成功之道

　　年輕人創業之初，應該從最底層干起，這是件好事。

　　匹茲保有很多商業巨頭，在他們創業之初，都肩負過“重任”：他們以掃帚相伴，以打掃辦公室的方式度過了他們商業生涯中最初的時光。

　　我注意到我們現在辦公室里都有工友，于是年輕人就不幸錯過了商業教育中這個有益的環節。

　　如果碰巧哪天上午專職掃地的工友沒有來，某個具有未來合伙人氣質的年輕人會毫不猶豫地試著拿起掃帚。

　　在必要時新來的員工掃掃地也無妨，不會因為而有什么損失。

　　我自己就曾經掃過地。

　　假如你已經被錄用，并且有了一個良好的開端，我對你的建議是：要志存高遠。

　　一個年輕人，如果不把自己想象成一家大公司未來的老板或者是合伙人，那我會對他不屑一顧。

　　不論職位有多高，你的內心都不要滿足于做一個總管，領班或者總經理。

　　要對自己說：我要邁向頂尖!要做就做你夢想中的國王!

　　成功的首要條件和最大秘訣就是：把你的精力，思想和資本全都集中在你正從事的事業上。

　　一旦開始從事某種職業，就要下定決心在那一領域闖出一片天地來;做這一行的領導人物，采納每一點改進之心，采用最優良的設備，對專業知識熟稔于心。

　　一些公司的失敗就在于他們分散了資金，因為這就意味著分散了他們的精力。

　　他們向這方面投資，又向那方面投資;在這里投資，在那里投資，到處都投資。

　　“不要把所有的雞蛋放在一個籃子里”的說法大錯特錯。

　　我要對你說：“把所有的雞蛋都放在一個籃子里，然后小心地看好那個籃子。

　　”看看你周圍，你會注意到：這么做的人其實很少失敗。

　　看管和攜帶一個籃子并不太難。

　　人們總是試圖提很多籃子，所以才打破這個國家的大部分雞蛋。

　　提三個籃子的人，必須把一個頂在頭上，而這個籃子很可能倒下來，把他自己絆倒。

　　美國商人的一個缺點就是不夠專注。

　　把我的話歸納一下：要志存高遠;不要出入酒吧;要滴酒不沾，或要喝也只在用餐時喝少許;不要做投機買賣;不要寅吃卯糧;要把公司的利益當作自己的利益;取消訂貨的目的永遠是為了挽救貨主;要專注;要把所有的雞蛋放在一個籃子里，然后小心地看好它;要量入為出;最后，要有耐心，正如愛默生所言，“誰都無法阻止你最終成功，除非你自己承認自己失敗。”

　　優美的英文散文隨筆【2】On Meeting the Celebrated

　　I have always wondered at the passion many people have to meet the celebrated.

　　The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

　　The celebrated develop a technique to deal with the persons they come across.

　　They show the world a mask, often an impressive on, but take care to conceal their real selves.

　　They play the part that is expected from them, and with practice learn to play it very well, but you are stupid if you think that this public performance of theirs corresponds with the man within.

　　I have been attached, deeply attached, to a few people; but I have been interested in men in general not for their own sakes, but for the sake of my work.

　　I have not, as Kant enjoined, regarded each man as an end in himself, but as material that might be useful to me as a writer.

　　I have been more concerned with the obscure than with the famous.

　　They are more often themselves.

　　They have had no need to create a figure to protect themselves from the world or to impress it.

　　Their idiosyncrasies have had more chance to develop in the limited circle of their activity, and since they have never been in the public eye it has never occurred to them that they have anything to conceal.

　　They display their oddities because it has never struck them that they are odd.

　　And after all it is with the common run of men that we writers have to deal; kings, dictators, commercial magnates are from our point of view very unsatisfactory.

　　To write about them is a venture that has often tempted writers, but the failure that has attended their efforts shows that such beings are too exceptional to form a proper ground for a work of art.

　　They cannot be made real.

　　The ordinary is the writer’s richer field.

　　Its unexpectedness, its singularity, its infinite variety afford unending material.

　　The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements.

　　He is inexhaustible.

　　You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.

　　For my part I would much sooner spend a month on a desert island with a veterinary surgeon than with a prime minister.

　　譯文：

　　論見名人

　　許多人熱衷于見名人，我始終不得其解。

　　在朋友面前吹噓自己認識某某名人，同此而來的聲望只能證明自己的微不足道。

　　名人個個練就了一套處世高招，無論遇上誰，都能應付自如。

　　他們給世人展現的是一副面具，常常是美好難忘的面具，但他們會小心翼翼地掩蓋自己的真相。

　　他們扮演的是大家期待的角色，演得多了，最后都能演得惟妙惟肖。

　　如果你還以為他們在公眾面前的表演就是他們的真實自我，那就你傻了。

　　我自己就喜歡一些人，非常喜歡他們。

　　但我對人感興趣一般不是因為他們自身的緣故，而是出于我工作需求。

　　正如康德勸告的那樣，我從來沒有把認識某人作為目的，而是將其當作對一個作家有用的創作素材。

　　比之名流顯士，我更加關注無名小卒。

　　他們常常顯得較為自然真實，他們無須再創造另一個人物形象，用他來保護自己不受世人干擾，或者用他來感動世人。

　　他們的社交圈子有限，自己的種種癖性也就越有可能得到滋長。

　　因為他們從來沒有引起公眾的關注，也就從來沒有想到過要隱瞞什么。

　　他們會表露他們古怪的一面，因為他們從來就沒有覺得有何古怪。

　　總之，作家要寫的是普通人。

　　在我們看來，國王，獨者和商界大亨等都是不符合條件的。

　　去撰寫這些人物經常是作家們難以抗拒的冒險之舉，可為此付出的努力不免以失敗告終，這說明這些人物都過于特殊，無法成為一件藝術作品的創作根基，作家也不可能把他們寫得真真切切。

　　老百姓才是作家的創作沃土，他們或變幻無常，或難覓其二，各式人物應有盡有，這些都給作家提供了無限的創作素材。

　　大人物經常是千人一面，小人物身上才有一組組矛盾元素，是取之不盡的創作源泉，讓你驚喜不斷。

　　就我而言，如果在孤島上度過一個月，我寧愿和一名獸醫相守，也不愿同一位首相做伴。

　　優美的英文散文隨筆【3】The 50-Percent Theory of Life

　　I believe in the 50-percent theory.

　　Half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they re worse.

　　I believe life is a pendulum swing.

　　It takes time and experience to understand what normal is, and that gives me the perspective to deal with the surprises of the future.

　　Let’s benchmark the parameters: yes, I will die.

　　I’ve dealt with the deaths of both parents, a best friend, a beloved boss and cherished pets.

　　Some of these deaths have been violent, before my eyes, or slow and agonizing.

　　Bad stuff, and it belongs at the bottom of the scale.

　　Then there are those high points: romance and marriage to the right person; having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he’s swimming with the dogs, discovering his compassion so deep it manifests even in his kindness to snails, his imagination so vivid he builds a spaceship from a scattered pile of Legos.

　　But there is a vast meadow of life in the middle, where the bad and the good flip-flop acrobatically.

　　This is what convinces me to believe in the 50-percent theory.

　　One spring I planted corn too early in a bottomland so flood-prone that neighbors laughed.

　　I felt chagrined at the wasted effort.

　　Summer turned brutal---the worst heat wave and drought in my lifetime.

　　The air-conditioned died; the well went dry; the marriage ended; the job lost; the money gone.

　　I was living lyrics from a country tune---music I loathed.

　　Only a surging Kansas City Royals team buoyed my spirits.

　　Looking back on that horrible summer, I soon understood that all succeeding good things merely offset the bad.

　　Worse than normal wouldn’t last long.

　　I am owed and savor the halcyon times.

　　The reinvigorate me for the next nasty surprise and offer assurance that can thrive.

　　The 50-percent theory even helps me see hope beyond my Royals’ recent slump, a field of struggling rookies sown so that some year soon we can reap an October harvest.

　　For that on blistering summer, the ground moisture was just right, planting early allowed pollination before heat withered the tops, and the lack of rain spared the standing corn from floods.

　　That winter my crib overflowed with corn---fat, healthy three-to-a-stalk ears filled with kernels from heel to tip---while my neighbors’ fields yielded only brown, empty husks.

　　Although plantings past may have fallen below the 50-percent expectation, and they probably will again in the future, I am still sustained by the crop that flourishes during the drought.

　　譯文：

　　生活理論半對半

　　我信奉對半理論。

　　生活時而無比順暢，時而倒霉透頂。

　　我覺得生活就像來回擺的鐘擺。

　　讀懂生活的常態需要時間和閱歷，而讀懂它也練就了我面對未來的生活態度。

　　讓我們確定一下好壞的標準：是的，我注定會死去。

　　我已經經歷了雙親，一位好友，一位敬愛的老板和心愛寵物的死亡。

　　有些突如其來，近在眼前，有些卻緩慢痛苦。

　　這些都是糟糕的事情，它們屬于最壞的部分。

　　生活中也不乏高潮：墜入愛河締結良緣;身為人父養育幼子，諸如訓練指導兒子的棒球隊，當他和狗在小河中嬉戲時搖槳劃船，感受他如此強烈的同情心-即使對蝸牛也善待有加，發現他如此豐富的想象力-即使用零散的樂高玩具積木也能堆出太空飛船。

　　但在生活最好與最壞部分之間有一片巨大的中間地帶，其間各種好事壞事像耍雜技一樣上下翻滾，輪番出現。