西奥多·罗斯福/Theodore Roosevelt
西奥多·罗斯福（1858—1919），美国第26任总统、作家、探险家和军事家，毕业于哈佛大学，曾发表《勤奋地生活》演说，旨在针对19世纪末美国骄奢**逸、贪图享乐之风盛行，藉此文以遏制当时的腐败现象，这篇《艰辛的人生》也反映了他这种反对怠惰安逸、崇尚奋斗人生的思想。
A life of slothful ease,a life of that peace which springs merely f rom lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things,is a s little worthy of a nation as an individual.
We do not admire the man of timid peace.We admire the man who embod ies victorious efforts,the man who never wrongs his neighbor,who is pr ompt to help a friend,but who has those virile qualities necessary to w in in the stern strife of actual life.It is hard to fail,but it is wor se never to have tried to succeed.In this life we get nothing save by e ffort.Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has be en effort stored up in the past.A man can be free from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to g ood purpose.If the freedom thus purchased is used aright,and the man s till does actual work,though of a different kind,whether as a writer o r a general,whether in the field of politics or in the field of explora tion and adventure,he shows he deserves his good fortune.
But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labo r as a period,not of preparation,but of mere enjoyment,even though pe rhaps not of vicious enjoyment,he shows that he is simply a cumberer on the earth's surface;and he surely unfits himself to hold his own place with his fellows,if the need to do so should again arise.A mere life o f ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life,and,above all,it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in t he world.
As it is with the individual,so it is with the nation.It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history.Thrice happ y is the nation that has a glorious history.Far better it is to dare mi ghty things,to win glorious triumphs,even though checkered by failure,than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suf fer much,because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither vict ory nor defeat.