逍遥右脑 2014-04-28 08:59
英语：变老的那一天
“I dread to come to the end of the year,said a friend to me recently, ”it makes me realize I am growing old.“
William James, the great psychologist, said that most men are ”old fogies at twenty-fiveHe was right. Most men at twenty-five are satisfied with their jobs. They have accumulated the little stock of prejudices that they call their “Principles, ” and closed their minds to all new ideas; they have ceased to grow.
The minutea man ceases to grow-no matter what his years-that minute he begins to be old. On the other hand, the really great man never grows old.
Goethe passed out at eighty-three, and finished his Faust only a few years earlier; Gladstone took up a new language when he was seventy. Laplace, the astronomer, was still at work when death caught up with him at seventy-eight. He died crying, “What we know is nothing; what we do not know is immense.”
And there you have the real answer to the question, “When is a man old?”
Laplace at seventy-eight died young. He was still unsatisfied, still sure that he had a lot to learn.
As long as a man can keep himself in that attitude of mind, as long as he can look back on every year and say , “I grew,” he is still young.
The minute he ceases to grow, the minute he says to himself, “I know all that I need to know,”--that day youth stops. He may be twenty-five or seventy-five, it makes no difference. On that day he begins to be old.
“我害怕邻近岁末年尾”，一位友人最近对我说：“它使我意识到我正在变老。”
巨大的心理学家威廉？詹姆斯就曾说过，大多数人“25岁时就成了保守掉队者”。他的话是对的。大多数人25岁时就知足于他们的工作。他们已经积聚了一些他们称之为“准则”的成见，对所有新的思维封闭心灵之门；他们已经停止成长。
一个人一旦停滞成长--不论他年纪多大--他就开始朽迈。反之，真正的巨人素来不会衰老。
歌德享年83岁，去世前多少年才实现《浮士德》；格莱斯顿70岁时又开始学习一门本国语；法国地理学家拉普拉斯78岁死时还在工作着。临死前，他大声喊道：“咱们所知的太少太少，我们所不知的太多太多。”
“一个人何时变老？”，从这类事例中对这个问题你已经有了真正的谜底。
拉普拉斯78岁逝世时依然年轻。他照旧不满意，仍旧觉得很多货色要学。
一个人，只有他可以坚持这种心态，只要他在回想从前的一年时可能说“我在成长”，他就仍然年青。
他一旦结束成长，他一旦对本人说“我该懂的都懂了”，这个时候他的青春也就完了。他可能在25岁时死去，也可能在75岁时逝世去，这都不差别。就在那一天，他开端变老。 （）