参考译文：
\perceive how highly he was praising letters as an occupation. There is no end, indeed, to making books or experiments, or to travel, or to gathering wealth. Problem gives rise to problem. We may study for ever, and we are never as learned as we would. We have never made a statue worthy of our dreams. And when we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. In the infinite universe there is room for our swiftest diligence and to spare. It is not like the works of Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a private park, or in the neighborhood of a single hamlet, the weather and the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a lifetime there will be always something new to startle and delight us.
第 23 篇
原文：
正是因为不停地追求进取，我们才感到生活幸福。一件事完成后，另一件随之而来，如此连绵不绝，永无止境。对于往前看的人来说，眼前总有一番新天地。虽然我们蜗居于这颗小行星上，整日忙于琐事且生命短暂，但我们生来就有不尽的希望，如天上繁星，遥不可及。只要生命犹在，希望便会不止。真正的幸福在于怎样开始，而不是如何结束，在于我们的希冀，而并非拥有。
参考译文：
We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series. There is 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 brief period of years, we are so constituted that our hopes are inaccessible, like stars, and the term of hoping is prolonged until the term of life. 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.
第 24 篇
原文：
老太太总以自家花园里那棵高大的玫瑰树为荣。她非常喜欢告诉别人，数年前她初次结婚时从罗马带回来的枝条，是如何长成如今这般高大的。那时，她与丈夫乘马车从罗马旅行归来(那时还没有火车)，途经锡耶那南部的崎岖路段时，马车坏了，他们被迫就宿于路边的小屋里。住宿条件当然非常差；她一夜未能安眠，一早便起身穿好衣服，立于窗前，感受着扑面而来的席席凉风，等待着黎明的到来。事隔多年，她仍然记得那情景。明月高悬在青山群峦之上，远处山峰上的小镇逐渐明亮起来，月亮慢慢消退，晨曦把群山涂得粉红。突然之间，一束阳光照亮了城镇。城里的窗户相继明亮起来，反射出耀眼的光芒。最后，整个小城宛若繁星，在天空中不停闪烁。 （节选自《追忆往事》）
参考译文：
The old lady had always been proud of the great rose-tree in her garden, and was fond of telling how it had grown from a cutting she had brought years before from Italy, when she was first married. She and her husband had been travelling back in their carriage from Rome ( it was before the time of railways ) and on a bad piece of road south of Siena the carriage had broken down, and had been forced to pass the night in a little house by the road-side. The accommodation was wretched of course; she had spent a sleepless night, and rising early had stood, wrapped up, at her window, with the cool air blowing on her face, to watch the dawn. She could still, after all these years, remember the blue mountains with the bright moon above them, and how a far-off town on one of the peaks had gradually grown whiter and whiter, till the moon faded, the mountains were touched with the pink of the rising sun, and suddenly the town was lit as by an illumination, one window after another catching and reflecting the sun' beam, till at last the whole little city twinkled and sparkled up in the sky like a nest of stars.
第 25 篇
原文：
“人们的生活越来越富裕，但却远不如以前那样快乐了”，这个现象似乎早已成为现代生活永恒的矛盾之一。一个可能的答案就潜藏在我们的心
理因素中，即如何才能够满足。我们对于地位、财富的需求从来都不是孤立定位的，而是在与参照组—通常是那些我们自认为与其地位相当的人—比较之后得出的。我们无法孤立地对现今所拥有的一切心存感激，我们也无法铭记自己在历史进程中所取得的成功。只有当我们所拥有的和我们共同成长的朋友、一起工作的同事一样多甚至比他们更多的时候。我们才会感觉到幸福。 参考译文：
第 26 篇
原文：
它不像汉白玉那样的细腻，可以刻字雕花，也不像大青石那样的光滑，可以浣纱捶布。它静静地卧在那里，院里的树荫没有庇覆它，花儿也不再在它身边生长。荒草便繁衍出来，枝蔓上下，慢慢地，竟锈上了绿苔、黑斑。我们这些做孩子的，也讨厌起它来，曾合伙要搬走它，但力气又不足；虽时时咒骂它，嫌弃它，也无可奈何，只好任它留在那里去了。