双语对照 ● The Strenuous Life　艰辛的人生

The Strenuous Life　艰辛的人生

◎ Theodore Roosevelt

A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as an individual.

一种慵懒安逸的生活，一种仅仅是因为缺少追寻伟大事物的渴望或能力而引起的悠闲，这样的个人对国家来说是毫无价值的。

We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious efforts, the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern[59]strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past. A man can be free from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune.

我们不会羡慕那些怯懦安逸的人。我们只会欣赏那种奋力向上的人；那种永不错怪邻里，乐于帮助朋友，而且很有男子气概，能够战胜现实生活的残酷竞争的人。失败是痛苦的，可从来没为成功放手一搏则更糟糕。在人的一生中，任何收获都是通过努力得到的。现在不用努力，只是意味着过去积攒的努力尚有余留。一个人不必工作，除非他或他的祖先曾经努力工作过，并取得了丰厚的收获。如果他能利用换取到的自由做些实际的工作，尽管那是一份不同的工作，不论是成为作家或将军，不论是在政治领域或是探险和冒险方面，都表明他值得拥有这份财富。

But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer on the earth’s surface; and he surely unfits himself to hold his own place with his fellows, if the need to do so should again arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

然而，如果在这段不用工作的时间里，他不知“未雨绸缪”，只知享乐（尽管他所从事的或许并非邪恶的享乐），那就表明了他只是地球表面上的一个赘疣。当他再次需要在伙伴面前维持自己昔日的地位时，他就注定会失败。安逸的生活终究不会是令人满意的生活。更重要的是，过着安逸生活的那些人，肯定无力担当世间的重任。

As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs[60], even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

这对国家和个人来说，都是一样的。没有历史的国家是一个幸福的国度，这简直就是最可耻的谎言。拥有光辉历史的国家才是最幸福的国度。为了伟大事业而身陷险境，为了赢得光荣胜利而吃尽失败之苦，那也胜过与没有享受过多大快乐、也没有遭受过多大苦的平庸之人为伍（因为他们生活在一个个既享受不到胜利，也遭遇不到失败的灰暗世界里）。

美丽语录

Miracles sometimes occur, but you have to work terribly for them.

奇迹有时候是会发生的，但是你得为之拼命努力。

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