Mustn't beauty be shallow if it can be painted on? Mustn't beauty be a delusion if it can blink off and on like a flickering bulb? A wedding gown will eventually grow musty in a mothproof box; flowers will fade, and the glow will seep out of the brightest day. I'll grant that we may be fooled by facades, may be led astray by our fickle eyes. But I've been married to Ruth for thirty years, remember. I've watched my daughter grow for twenty-four years, my son for twenty, and these loved ones have taught me more hopeful possibility. Season after season I've knelt over fiddleheads breaking ground, studied the wings of swallowtails nectaring on blooms, spied skeins of geese high in the sky. There are books I've read, pieces of music I've listened to, ideas I've revisited time and again with fresh delight. Having lived among people and places and works of imagination whose beauty runs all the way through; I feel certain that genuine beauty is more than skin deep, that real beauty dwells not in my own eye alone but out in the world.
如果美可以畫在畫板上，難道它就一定不會膚淺？如果美就像燈泡那樣，可以開開關關難道它就一定不會是一種錯覺嗎？婚紗最終會在防蛀的箱子中發霉，花兒會凋謝，最明亮的一天也終會暗淡。我同意我們會被片面的見解所迷惑，也會被我們易變的觀察所誤導。但我不會忘記，我和魯思結婚已經30年，我看著女兒24年的成長，兒子20的成長。這些我深愛的人使我懂得了一種更富希望的可能性。冬去春來，我蹲在蕨類植物旁邊，觀察它們如何破土而出，我研究吸吮著花蕊蜜汁的鳳尾蝶的翅膀、觀察在天上高高飛翔的一群群大雁。還有我讀過的書、聽過的樂曲，一次又一次讓我充滿新鮮喜悅感的想法。與充滿美的人、地方和創作的作品生活在一起，使我深信真正的美絕不膚淺，這種美也不僅存在于我的眼中，而是客觀地存在于我們身外的世界。
While I can speak with confidence of what I feel in the presence of beauty, I must go out on speculative limb if I'm to speak about the qualities in the world that call it forth. Far out on that limb; therefore, let me suggest that a creature, an action, a landscape, a line of poetry or music, a scientific formula, or anything else that might seem beautiful, seems so because it gives us a glimpse of the underlying order of things. The swirl of a galaxy and the swirl of a gown resemble one another not merely by accident, but because they follow the grain of the universe. That grain runs through our own depths. What we find beautiful accords with our most profound sense of how things ought to be. Ordinarily, we live in a tension between our perceptions and our desires. When we encounter beauty, that tension vanishes, and outward and inward im ages agree.
我可以充滿信心地談論我對美的感受，但是若要讓我談論使美產生的事物的特質，我只能進行不充分的推斷。因而，這也許是很不充分的推斷。但我想說，一種生物、一種舉止、一種地貌、一行詩、一段樂曲、一道科學公式或其他美麗的事物，之所以看起來美麗，是因為它們能讓我們窺見事物隱含的序。星系的旋渦同裙擺的旋轉的類似并非偶然。它們都沿循著宇宙的本質。這種本質存于我們的內在。我們認為美的事物總是與我們內心的感覺相吻合。多時候，我們都生活在愿望和理性的矛盾中。當我們發現美的時候，矛盾消失，內在和外在形象獲得了統一。
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