雙語美文：給年輕人的忠告(Advice To Youth)

獲悉人們希望我在這里講幾句時,我就問他們我該講些什么。他們希望我講些適合年輕人的東西――一些教誨性,有教育意義的東西。或是一些好的建議。這太好了!我倒是一直想給年輕人提點建議呢,因為人在年輕時期;好的建議極易在心底扎根。并能終生受用,那么,首先,年輕朋友們――我要真誠地告誡你們―― 

一定要聽父母的話。長遠來講,這是最聰明的做法,如果你不聽話,他們就會逼著你聽話。大多數(shù)父母認為他們知道的比你們多,在這種情況下,與其基于自己的判斷行事,還不如迎合他們的想法。這樣你會收獲更多。 

如果你有上級的話，請尊重他們，對陌生人和他人也是如此。如果某個人得罪了你,而你也不知道他是否是故意的。那就,不要采用極端做法,而要等待時機,給他當頭一棒,這就夠了;如果發(fā)現(xiàn)他并非有意傷害你,那么,你就應該站出來,坦白承認教訓他的事;要像一個男子漢一樣承認錯誤并說明自己并非有意。還有就是,切勿使用暴力。在這個和平友好的年代,暴力已經過時。讓我們譴責這些低俗的舉止,粉碎暴力吧! 

早睡早起――這是十分明智的。有些人主動起床,也有些人被迫起床。當然,在百靈鳥的歌聲中起床是最愜意不過了。當人人都知道你與百靈鳥同迎清晨。你便會備受稱贊;如果你得到一只中意的百靈鳥,并按自己的意愿訓練它,讓他九點半。甚至是任何時候起床就不是件難事――當然。這并不是說要耍詭計。 

現(xiàn)在。我們來談談說謊吧。要說謊,就得小心謹慎,否則很容易穿幫。一旦被揭穿,別人就不再認為你是善良和純潔的,他們眼中的你就不是從前的你了。很多年輕人就因為一個笨拙或并不圓滿的謊言永遠地傷害了自己,原因在于他們不夠謹慎且缺乏訓練。有些人認為,年輕人不能撒謊。當然,這有些偏激。我不會這么偏激,而是始終相信自己是有道理的,我認為,年輕人應適當運用這門偉大的藝術,通過訓練和實踐,他們將變得自信、優(yōu)雅和精確,而這些恰恰可以使他們完美出色地完成任務。耐心、勤奮和對細節(jié)的認真揣摩――都是年輕人必須具備的條件。

隨著時間的流逝,這些要素將會使你們臻于完美,而你們也只有仰仗這些要素才能成就日后的輝煌。想想那位無可匹敵的大師吧,多年沉悶乏味的學習、思考、實踐和練習才使他得以在世人面前說出這樣的經典語句――“真理有著巨大的力量,并將戰(zhàn)勝一切”――這是最偉大的悖論,是凡人所能達到的最高境界。歷史和個人的經歷都深刻地表明:真理易被推翻,但絕妙的謊言卻永遠顛撲不破。波士頓立有一座紀念麻醉術發(fā)明者的紀念碑。但后來,很多人發(fā)現(xiàn),這個人根本不是麻醉術的發(fā)明者,他不過是竊取了他人的成果。真理的力量真的很強大嗎?它能戰(zhàn)勝一切嗎?哦,不,朋友們,那座紀念碑是用很堅固的材料做成,但它所昭示的謊言將比紀念碑本身還要久一百萬年。笨拙、無說服力和漏洞百出的謊言是你應當通過不斷學習去避免的,這樣的謊言還不及一般真理長久。為什么呢?你還是說出真相吧,現(xiàn)在就說。一個沒有說服力、可笑、荒謬的謊言不會存在兩年――除非它是對某人的誹謗。當然,這樣的謊言牢不可破,但這對你的名譽沒有什么好處。一句話:盡早練習這門高尚而美麗的藝術吧――現(xiàn)在就開始。要是我當年入門早,現(xiàn)在就已經學會了。 

切不要隨便玩弄槍械。年輕人因為無知和不小心擺弄槍械而造成痛苦和傷害的例子太多了!就在四天前,我避暑的農舍隔壁住著一位滿頭銀發(fā)、和藹可親的老奶奶,她是世界上最可親的老人家之一了。當時,她正坐在那兒干活。她的小孫子躡手躡腳溜了進來,還拿著一管舊的、變了形的、銹跡斑斑的槍,這支槍好多年沒用了,大家都以為里邊沒裝子彈。孫子用槍指著她,笑著威脅她。她個分驚恐,驚叫著跑開,并在門的另一側求饒。但當她從他身邊走過時,他用槍幾乎頂著她的胸膛,并且扣動了板機!他以為槍膛里沒子彈。的確是――槍里確實沒子彈,所以并沒有造成什么傷害。這是我聽過的唯一一樁例外。因此,同樣地,不要去碰沒有裝子彈的槍。它們是人類制造出的最精確的奪命工具。不要在槍支上浪費精力,不要給槍裝支架,不要裝瞄準器,甚至不要去瞄準。不,你只要拿起一樣類似的東西并且“砰砰”兩下,保證你會擊中目標。一個在四十五分鐘之內無法用加特林擊中三十碼遠的教堂的年輕人,可能會用一支破舊的沒裝子彈的槍在一百碼處次次擊中他的奶奶。想想看,如果滑鐵盧戰(zhàn)役中的一方是拿著沒裝子彈的槍的孩子們,另一方是他們的女性親戚,結果會如何呢?只要想想,就會讓人不寒而栗。 

書有各種各樣的,但好書才適合年輕人閱讀。請記住,好書能讓你不斷完善自身,這種作用力強大、不可估量且難以名狀。因此,年輕的朋友們,請謹慎選擇你們的讀物,要十分謹慎。你們應該專門讀羅伯遜的《道德啟示錄》、巴克斯特的《圣徒的安息》和《傻瓜出國記》諸如此類的作品。 

我說得已經夠多了。我希望你們能珍惜這些建議,讓它們成為你的向導,點燃你們思想的火花。按照這些建議去努力培養(yǎng)自己的性格吧。慢慢地,一旦你塑造好了自己的性格,你將驚喜而欣慰地發(fā)現(xiàn),自己和他人是如此相似。 

感悟：好書能讓你不斷完善自身，因此，年輕的朋友們，請謹慎選擇你們的讀物，要十分謹慎。

Advice To Youth

Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of I talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth-- something didactic, instructive, or something in the nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few things in my mind which I have often longed to say for the instruction of the young; for it is in one's tender early years that such things will best take root and be most enduring and most valuable. First, then. I will say to you my young friends ―― and I say it beseechingly, urgingly ―― 

　　Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run, because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment. 

　　Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any, also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. That will be sufficient, if you shall find that he had not intended any offense, come out frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you struck him; acknowledge it like a man and say you didn't mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things, Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined. 

　　Go to bed early, get up early-- this is wise. Some authorities say get up with the sun; some say get up with one thing, others with another. But a lark is really the best thing to get up with. It gives you a splendid reputation with everybody to know that you get up with the lark; and if you get the right kind of lark, and work at him right, you can easily train him to get up at half past nine, every time--it's no trick at all. 

　　Now as to the matter of lying. You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never again be, in the eyes of the good and the pure, what you were before. Many a young person has injured himself permanently through a single clumsy and ill finished lie, the result of carelessness born of incomplete training. Some authorities hold that the young out not to lie at all. That of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance, and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable. Patience, diligence, painstaking attention to detail ―― these are requirements; these in time, will make the student perfect; upon these only, may he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence. Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that "Truth is mighty and will prevail”―― the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal. There is in Boston a monument of the man who discovered anesthesia; many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didn't discover it at all, but stole the discovery from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will it prevail? Ah no, my hearers, the monument is made of hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years--except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then, of course, but that is no merit of yours. A final word: begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art early--begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned how. 

　　Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right ―― it wasn't. So there wasn't any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same, don't you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You don't have to take any pains at all with them; you don't have to have a rest, you don't have to have any sights on the gun, you don't have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes one shudder. 

　　There are many sorts of books; but good ones are the sort for the young to read. Remember that. They are a great, an inestimable, and unspeakable means of improvement. Therefore be careful in your selection, my young friends; be very careful; confine yourselves exclusively to Robertson's Sermons, Baxter's Saint's Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works of that kind. 

　　But I have said enough. I hope you will treasure up the instructions which I have given you, and make them a guide to your feet and a light to your understanding. Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else's.