单词与词组　Words and phrases

    ①dread  v. 惧怕

    ②psychologist  n. 心理学家

    ③fogy  n. 守旧者

    ④Goethe  n. 歌德(诗人)

    ⑤immense  a. 无边的
 
    "I dread① to come to the end of the year, said a friend to me recently, "it makes me realize  I am growing old."

    “我惧怕临近岁末年尾”，一位朋友最近对我说：“它使我意识到我正在变老。”
 
    William James, the great psychologist②, said that most men are "old fogies③ at twenty-five. He 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.

    伟大的心理学家威廉-詹姆斯就曾说过，大多数人“25岁时就成了守旧落伍者”。他的话是对的。大多数人25岁时就满足于他们的工作。他们已经积累了一些他们称之为“原则”的偏见，对所有新的思想关闭心灵之门；他们已经停止成长。
 
    The minute a 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.

    一个人一旦停止成长--不管他年龄多大--他就开始衰老。反之，真正的伟人从来不会衰老。
 
    Goethe④ 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 immense⑤."

    歌德享年83岁，逝世前几年才完成《浮士德》；格莱斯顿70岁时又开始学习一门外国语；法国天文学家拉普拉斯78岁死时还在工作着。临死前，他大声喊道：“我们所知的太少太少，我们所不知的太多太多。”
 
     And there you have the real answer to the question, "When is a man old?"

    “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答案。
 
    Laplace at seventy-eight died young. He was still unsatisfied, still sure that he had a lot to learn.

    拉普拉斯78岁逝世时依然年轻。他依旧不满足，依旧感到许多东西要学。
 
    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.

    一个人，只要他能够保持这种心态，只要他在回首过去的一年时能够说“我在成长”，他就依然年轻。
 
    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.

    他一旦停止成长，他一旦对自己说“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岁时死去，这都没有区别。就在那一天，他开始变老。