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Thank you very much to thee. Thank you. It's a...So: after over 100 years of Class Days, finally you get a British speaker.
What took you so long? Did that little disagreement of 1776 really rankle so much? And why now? Is it because British election campaigns only last four weeks?
For whatever reason, it is an honour to be here and to say to the Yale College Class of 2008: you did it; you came through; from all of us to you: congratulations.
The invitation to a former British Prime Minister to address a college which boasts five former Presidents, many former Vice Presidents and Senators too numerous to mention, is either to give me an exaggerated sense of my own importance or you a reduced sense of yours.
貴校培養(yǎng)出了5位美國(guó)總統(tǒng)、很多副總統(tǒng)和難以數(shù)計(jì)的參議院，卻邀請(qǐng)一位前英國(guó)首相來(lái)發(fā)表演講，這要么是夸大了我的重要性，要么就是減小了你們的重要性。
It was Churchill or Oscar Wilde—and there is a difference—who called us two nations divided by a common language and so we are.
是丘吉爾還是奧斯卡•王爾德——這兩人當(dāng)然是有區(qū)別的——把英美兩國(guó)說(shuō)成是由一種相同的語(yǔ)言劃分的兩個(gè)不同的國(guó)家，你們可以從我今天的出場(chǎng)來(lái)判斷這一點(diǎn)，事實(shí)確實(shí)如此。
Here I am at Yale and set to come back for the fall semester. My old Oxford tutor was, I'm afraid, horrified to hear I had been taken on by Yale. His worries were all for Yale I may say. He said: "I only hope for their sake you are going there to learn rather than teach."
