罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文/Robert Louis Stevenson
罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文（1850—1894），英国小说家、散文家。生于爱丁堡，毕业于爱丁堡大学法律系，一生为肺病所扰，周游各地养病，期间发表大量短篇小说和散文游记。主要作品有小说《金银岛》、《化身博士》、《绑架》等。他的作品情节奇妙浪漫，文笔优美雅致。
It seems as if a great deal were attainable in a world where there a re so many marriages and decisive battles,and where we all,at certain hours of the day,and with great gusto and dispatch,stow a portion of v ictuals finally and irretrievably into the bag which contains us.And it would seem also,on a hasty view,that the attainment of as much as poss ible was the one goal of man's contentious life.And yet,as regards th e spirit,this is but a semblance.We live in an ascending scale when we live happily,one thing leading to another in an endless series.There i s always a new horizon for onward-looking men,and although we dwell on a small planet,immersed in petty business and not enduring beyond a bri ef period of years,we are so constituted that our hopes are inaccessibl e,like stars,and the term of hoping is prolonged until the term of lif e.To be truly happy is a question of how we begin and not of how we end,of what we want and not of what we have.An aspiration is a joy foreve r,a possession as solid as a landed estate,a fortune which we can neve r exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activ ity.To have many of these is to be spiritually rich.To those who have neither art nor science,the world is a mere arrangement of colors,or a rough footway where they may very well break their shins.It is in virtu e of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist wit h even patience,that he is charmed by the look of things and people,an d that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and plea sure.Desire and curiosity are the two eyes through which he sees the wo rld in the most enchanted colors:it is they that make women beautiful o r fossils interesting:and the man may squander his estate and come to b eggary,but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich in the possib ilities of pleasure.Suppose he could take one meal so compact and compr ehensive that he should never hunger any more;suppose him,at a glance,to take in all the features of the world and allay the desire for knowle dge;suppose him to do the like in any province of experience--would not that man be in a poor way for amusement ever after?