9.1 The Thoughts of An Idle Fellow
There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. He is not a man who slouches about with his hands in his pockets. On the contrary, his most startling characteristic is that he is always intensely busy……Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. [Haha : )]
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart. Love is too pure a light to burn long among noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection. [爱情之火太纯洁了，它无法在我们呼吸的污浊空气里长久燃烧。但在它熄灭之前，我们可以用它为火种点燃温暖的情爱之火。]
That warming glow is more suited to our cold little back parlor of a world than is the burning spirit love. Love should be the vestal fire of some mighty temple—some vast dim fane whose organ music is the rolling of the spheres. [这样的温和之光比起热烈燃烧的爱情之火，也许更适合世俗间寒冷仄狭的小客厅，爱情是那些非同寻常的高庙大殿里的贞洁之火，宏大幽暗的穹顶上，回荡着管风琴的音乐声]
We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life’s opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honer becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love-love dies. [到了这个岁数，我们已经学会低姿态处事。在生活这场戏剧的后半场再难寻觅雄奇壮丽的篇章。追求远大目标的壮志雄心也日渐消沉。时过境迁，对待荣誉能以理性也能合乎环境生存了。至于爱情——爱情已经死去。]
This blase old beau [bo] loves with an hysterical [hɪ’stɛrɪkl] fervor that requires four adjective to every noun to properly describe. [那些耽于享乐的花花公子的爱情是如此狂热炽烈，需要在每个名词前加上四个形容词，才能恰如其分地加以描述。]
Its affect on you is somewhat similar to what would probably be produced by a combined attach of toothache, indigestion, and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable; rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; dummy, maudlin [’mɔdlɪn], and quarrelsome; a nuisance [’nusns] to yourself and everybody about you. [它对你的影响，有点像牙疼、消化不良以及头疼脑热之类对你突然进行的一次联合袭击，你变得愚蠢、烦躁、易怒、对陌生人粗鲁无礼，也让朋友感到不安。举止粗鲁、感情脆弱、寻衅滋事。变成了一个自己和周围人都不喜欢的家伙。]
When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them. However they may have suffered from it at first, the recollection has become by then a pleasure.[当一个男人或女人喜欢咀嚼悲伤，沉思默想，不时刷新自己的记忆，使往昔的悲伤在记忆里新鲜如初，你就可以肯定这一切对他已不再是一种伤痛。最初的悲恸已经渐渐消退，这个时候的回忆已经变成了一种虐恋式的愉悦。]
Why assume that a doubled-up body, a contorted purple face, and a gaping mouth emitting a series of ear-splitting shrieks point to a state of more intelligent happiness than a pensive face reposing upon a little white hand, and a pain of gentle tear-dimmed eyes looking back through time’s dark avenue upon a fading past? [一双白嫩的小手托腮凝思，一双温情脉脉的泪眼穿越时间的黑暗隧道追忆着那过去的岁月，也算得是一种幸福吧。]
当我们回忆起曾经的伤痛带给我们的衰弱无助，而时间之手早已抚平我们滴血的伤口，抹去我们心头的酸楚和绝望；当我们从过去的烦恼中品尝出悲喜参半的甜蜜感受时，我们心头负担已不再沉重；当骑士襟怀的纽康姆上校面对死神的点名，大声回答“到”的时候，当汤姆和塔莉维尔冲开分隔他们的浓重迷雾紧紧地握着手，拥着对方走向汹涌的弗洛斯河的时候，内心也必定是同样的感受。[Time has laid his healing hand upon the wound when we can look back upon the pain we once fainted under and no bitterness or despair rises in our hearts.]
忧郁女神是一位沉思的，眼睛深陷的少女，直到“夜色渐浓，乌鸦的翅膀掠过摇曳的树梢”，她才偷偷地走出自己的小树林。她不喜欢白天耀眼的阳光。她的宫殿坐落于朦胧的国度，她就是在那里跟我相会的。[The wound belongs to Melancholy [[’mɛlənkɑli],忧郁的，忧郁] then, a thoughtful deep-eyed maiden who loves not the glare day. It is not fill “light thickens and the crow wings to the rocky wood” that she steals forth from her groves [[grəuvz]小树林]. Her palace is in twilight land. It is there she meets us.]