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.
上溯到美國人的先輩,他們都有撇下了親人,不能替逝去的父母合上眼瞼的痛楚。而如今的美國人在體驗了遠離我們大陸的兩次世界大戰造成的死亡以后,不論是對死亡的認識,還是對我們的生活方式的認識,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.
當然,18、19世紀的人文思想家們,他們是我們意識形態領域的先輩,他們認為人生的目的就是充分展示個人潛在的能力。對于他們來說,重要的是人本身的價值,而并非占有和使用才是人的價值。
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.
對于你們能用眼睛觀察事物的人,通過觀察那些難以捉摸的表情,觀察肌肉的顫抖和揮動的手勢,就能迅速捕捉一個人的基本特征,該是十分容易和更令人滿足的事情。
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.
他本來可以吸引很多人,只因她那副愁眉苦臉的表情,自覺做錯事的樣子,急于討好別人的舉動,或者也許是她以為別人會有意使她難堪而產生的下意識的敵意,往往把人嚇跑。
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.
我們可以將這類“也許”排滿一張長長的單子,其中,我們能夠有把握加以評估的卻很少。
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.
如果婚姻只是一種可以任意終結的親密關系,而家庭只是靠愛情的紐帶來維持,那么婚姻和家庭則淪為可以自由買賣的市場,每個人都可以穿梭于一系列或多或少會讓自己心滿意足的親密關系,從而使自己的心理資本得到最大的增值。