乔治·奥威尔的二十九句话
来源:豆瓣读书 作者:lukesun |
贴上我辑录的奥威尔言阳台对角绷着论,有些注明了出处。译文大多为我自己所加,不准确之处请原谅。 1. Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent. 在未证明其清白前,圣徒总应被判定有罪。——《关于甘地的思考》 2.Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. 自传只有在其披露了某些丢脸之事时才可信。——《萨尔瓦多·达利》 3. This age makes me so sick that sometimes I am almost impelled to stop at a corner and start calling down curse from Heaven like Jeremiah or Ezra. 这时代有时让我如此厌恶,以至于几乎忍不住想站在街角开始像耶利米或以斯拉那样,大声喊出来自天国的诅咒。(*耶利米,公元前7世纪和6世纪的希伯莱大先知;以斯拉,公元前5世纪希伯来崇高的预粉放在红色小言家,在犹太人出走以色列以后把他们领回耶路撒冷。) 4.Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. 大批看到,同时看到五千或一万册在一起后,书本就令人心烦乃至微感恶心。 5.Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. 谁控制了过去,谁就控制了未来;谁控制了现在,谁就控制了过去。 ——《一九八四》 6.The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection. 作人的要旨是不去追求完美。 7. No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy. 谁也不能在回首校园时代时真心真意地说那段日子完全不快乐。 ——《如此欢乐童年》 8.In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act. 在普天下皆骗的时代,讲真话就是一种革对角绷着黑色命行为。 9.Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. “双重思想”意味着在一个人的脑子里同时具有两种相互矛盾的信念,而且两种都接受。——《一九八四》 10.Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. 自由就是说二加二等于四的自由。若此成立,其他同理。——《一九八四》 11.All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. 所有动物一律平等,但有些动物比其他动物更平等。——《动物农场》 12.Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. 广告就是在拿根棍子在泔水桶里搅动产生的卡嗒声。 13.Liberal - a power worshipper without power. 开明派——一个无权而崇尚权力的人。 14. Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. 绝大多数人从生活中都得到了相当多的乐趣,但总的说来,生活就是受苦,只有年龄很小或者很蠢的人才会想像不是这样。 15.Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards. 从七八岁时起不再向大人表露真实感情似乎是一种本能。 16.Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness 只有在不想当然以为人生目标就是快乐时,才能快乐起来。 17.Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers. 语言应该由诗人和体力工人合力创造出来。 18.The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature. 正统的环境总不利于舞文弄墨,但最重要的是它会完全毁掉小说,那是各种文体体裁中最具无政府主义特点的。 19.Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting. 重要的运动比赛跟公平竞赛毫无关系。它和仇恨、嫉妒、自吹自擂、无视规则和看到暴行时的虐把它们一起收待狂兴奋感不可分离;换而言之,它是没有硝烟的战争。 20.All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. 所有作家都自负自私,也是懒惰的,在他们各种写作动机的根子里面,还存在一个谜团。写本书是一场可怕的、令人疲惫不堪的挣扎,就像很长一段时间得了令身心痛苦的病症。如果不是有某种他既不能抵抗又不能理解的魔鬼迫使着他,他是永远不会做起这样一件事的。——《我为何写作》 22.Good prose is like a windowpane. 好的文字就像窗玻璃。——《我为何写作》 23.You can go on and on telling lies, and the most palpable lies at that, and even if they are not actually believed, there is no strong revulsion. We are all drowning in filth…I feel that interlectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth…Is there no one who has both firm opinions and a balanced outlook? Actually there are plenty, but they are powerless. All power is in the hands of paranoiacs. 你可以永永远远把谎话说下去,但最明显的谎言是尽管没有人真正相信那些谎言,但对之也没有强烈反感。我们全被淹没在污秽当中……我觉得知识分子式诚实和公正的判断力已经从地球表面彻底消失……难道就没有人怀有坚定信念和公正态度了吗?实际上还有很多,但他们都没有力量,所有力量都掌握在偏执狂手中。 24.The weak have the right to make a different set of rules for themselves. 弱者有权为自己建立一套不同的规则。——《如此欢乐童年》 25. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. 战争即和平。自由即奴役。无知即力量。——《一九八四》 26.Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. 治语言……目的就是使谎言听起来像真理,杀人听起来值得尊敬,也给完全虚无飘渺之物以实实在在之感。 27.But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. 如果说思想使语言堕落,语言也能使思想堕落。 28.Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. 许多人真心实意地不想当圣徒,但那些当成了或向往当圣徒的人着黑色塑胶线大概对当人类没怎么动过心。 29.Nine times out of ten a revolutionary is merely a climber with a bomb in his pocket. 干革对角绷着黑色命的十有八绿细直纹短袖九不过是个口袋里揣着颗炸弹拼命往上爬的人。 |