29. Americans who stem from generations which left their old people behind and never closed their parents’ eyelids in death, and who have experienced the death provided by two world wars fought far from our shores are today pushing away from them both a recognition of death and a recognition of the way we live our lives.
上溯到美国人的先辈,他们都有撇下了亲人,不能替逝去的父母合上眼睑的痛楚。而如今的美国人在体验了远离我们大陆的两次世界大战造成的死亡以后,不论是对死亡的认识,还是对我们的生活方式的认识,都一概不在意了。
30. Certainly the humanist thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who are our ideological ancestors, thought the goal of life was the unfolding of a person’s potentialities: what mattered to them was the person who is much, not the one who have much or uses much.
当然,18、19世纪的人文思想家们,他们是我们意识形态领域的先辈,他们认为人生的目的就是充分展示个人潜在的能力。对于他们来说,重要的是人本身的价值,而并非占有和使用才是人的价值。
31. How much easier, how much more satisfying it is for you who can see to grasp quickly the essential qualities of another person by watching the subtleties of expression, the quiver of a muscle, the flutter of a hand.
对于你们能用眼睛观察事物的人,通过观察那些难以捉摸的表情,观察肌肉的颤抖和挥动的手势,就能迅速捕捉一个人的基本特征,该是十分容易和更令人满足的事情。
32. Her woebegone expression, her hang-dog manner, her over-anxiousness to please, or perhaps her unconscious hostility towards those she anticipated will affront her-all act to drive away those whom she would attract.
他本来可以吸引很多人,只因她那副愁眉苦脸的表情,自觉做错事的样子,急于讨好别人的举动,或者也许是她以为别人会有意使她难堪而产生的下意识的敌意,往往把人吓跑。
33. There is a very long list of such “perhapses”, few of which we are in a position to evaluate with any degree of assurance.
我们可以将这类“也许”排满一张长长的单子,其中,我们能够有把握加以评估的却很少。
34. If marriage exists only as an intimate relationship that can be terminated at will, and family exists only by virtue of bonds of affection, both marriage and family are relegated to the marketplace of trading places, with individuals maximizing their psychological capital by moving through a series of more or less satisfying intimate relationships.
如果婚姻只是一种可以任意终结的亲密关系,而家庭只是靠爱情的纽带来维持,那么婚姻和家庭则沦为可以自由买卖的市场,每个人都可以穿梭于一系列或多或少会让自己心满意足的亲密关系,从而使自己的心理资本得到最大的增值。