我自己的英文程度不高,所以对用英文表达我深遂的思想一直感到很头疼。我可以用中文表达得优雅的语句,在英文中找不到相应的词汇。
因寻找一句格言的出处,我找到了OSCAR WILDE的QUOTES.尽显语言之美。搬弄过来供大家欣赏。其中很多的幽默让你会心一笑。
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
愤世嫉俗者是一个知道所有东西的价格、却不知道它们的价值的人。
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
不够真诚是危险的,太真诚则绝对是致命的。
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
一个人在选择他的敌人时,再小心也不为过。
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
一个诗人什么都可以容忍,印刷错误除外。
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
所有女人都会变得像她们的母亲一样,这是女人的悲剧。但没有男人变得像他们的父亲,这是男人的悲剧。
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.
永远要宽恕你的敌人。没有什么比这更能让他们心烦的了。
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
美国是唯一一个直接从野蛮进入颓废、中间没有经过文明阶段的社会。这句话我令我大笑,我曾经说过一句类似的话。有个美国人问我,你为什么不来美国啊,我说,历史太短,不够我伸展想像空间。
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
要避免争论,争论总是俗不可耐,而且常常令人信服。
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
只要一个女人看上去比她自己的女儿小十岁,她就一定会心满意足。
Bad artists always admire each other's work.
糟糕的画家总是欣赏彼此的作品。
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
男女之间不可能存在友谊,有的只是爱恨情仇。
这句话好玩,可以用一生去印证。
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
良心和怯懦其实是一回事。
Dammit sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't be always living for pleasure.
该死,先生,结婚是你的职责,你不能总是逍遥快活。
Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.
不要给女人忠告;决不要给女人任何她晚上不能穿戴的东西。
这个男人总是鄙视女人,把女人的智商说得很低。所以他后来只爱男人。他是西方同性恋的骨灰级人物。曾因同性恋被判监牢。
Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
经验是一个人给自己所犯的错误取的名字。
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
时装丑陋得完全令人无法容忍,以至于我们必须每6个月就改变它的样式。
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
女人如何能期望会从男人那里获得幸福,如果他坚持把她当作一个完全正常的人。
这句话我的理解和翻译不同,我是觉得,男人如果把女人当成正常人类看待,那是不会令她快乐的。
I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
我喜欢政治晚会,这是唯一人们不谈政治的地方。
I am not young enough to know everything.
我还没有年轻到什么都懂的地步。
我觉得这句话,他的口气是:“年轻人什么都懂。”
I can resist everything except temptation.
我可以抗拒一切,诱惑除外。
I have made an important discovery…that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
我有一个重大发现——如果摄入足量酒精,就会产生各种陶醉的效果。
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
我喜欢演戏。与人生相比,演戏更真实。
I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
我经常锻炼。只是昨天我是在床上吃的早饭。
I think that God, in creating Man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
我想,上帝在创造人类时高估了他的能力。
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
我整个早上都在校对自己的一首诗,我去掉了一个逗号。下午我又把它加了上去。
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
世界上只有两种悲剧,一种是一个人没有得到他想要的,另一种是他得到了。
It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
美丽要比善良好,善良要比难看强。
It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment.
所有人类的重大问题都有一个共同点:没有点幽默和疯狂是没办法解决的。
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
争论者损失的只是智力。
It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
来自敌人的困难可以忍,来自朋友的成功则无可忍。
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
人生就是一件蠢事追着另一件蠢事而来,而爱情则是两个蠢东西追来追去。
Like dear St Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
就像亲爱的圣芳济一样,我也和贫穷联姻,但我的婚姻并不成功。
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
结婚是想象战胜了理智,再婚是希望战胜了经验。
这句话让我笑翻了。原句韵味十足。
Music makes one feel so romantic—at least it always gets on one's nerves, which is the same thing nowadays.
音乐让人感觉非常浪漫,至少让人感觉不安,如今两者是一回事。
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
没有女人应该对她的年龄十分准确。这显得有些精于算计。
One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
一个人决不应该相信说出自己真实年龄的女人。如果她把这都说出来了,那她什么都会说。
Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
请别开枪打死那个钢琴师,他已经尽力了。
Science is the record of dead religions.
科学是死去的宗教的记录。
Tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that when I ask for a watercress sandwich I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
请转告我对这家饭店厨师的赞誉,这是全世界最糟糕的三明治了,还有,我点的是豆瓣菜三明治,我并不是要面包片中夹一块菜田。
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
乐观的基础完全是恐惧。
The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden…It ends with Revelations.
《生命之书》始于一座花园里的一男一女……它最后以《启示录》告终。
The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
报纸和文学的区别是,报纸没法读,而文学则没人读。
The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
圣人和罪人的唯一区别是,每一个圣人都有过去,而每一个罪人都有未来。
he only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
对于忠告,你所能做的,就是把它奉送给别人,忠告从来就不是给自己准备的。
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
摆脱诱惑的唯一方法是屈服于它。
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
演出相当成功,但观众则是一场灾难。
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
公众极其宽容,他们可以宽容一切,天才除外。
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
世界上只有一件比被人谈论更糟糕的事,那就是没人谈论你。
Time is a waste of money.
时间是一种对金钱的浪费.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
失去一个父母可以看成是一种不幸;失去双亲看上去就像是一种粗心了。
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
爱自己就是开始一场延续一生的罗曼史。
True friends stab you in the front.
当面扎刀的是真朋友。
When good Americans die they go to Paris. When bad Americans die they go to America.
当美国的好人死了,他们就去巴黎。当美国的坏蛋死了,他们就去美国。
这个人对美国竭尽嘲讽之能。
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
所有糟糕的诗歌都源于真情实感。
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.
当我年轻时,我以为金钱是人生中最重要的东西。现在我老了,我知道这是真的。
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
当天神想要惩罚我们,他们就答应我们的祈祷。
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
每当人们赞同我时,我总希望自己一定是错了。
这句话我不苟同,我觉得他的意思是,如果大家都赞同我,我就觉得我错了。
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
恭维话从来没有让女人缴械,但可以让男人缴械。这就是性别差异。
Women love men for their defects; if men have enough of them women will forgive them everything, even their gigantic intellects.
女人因为男人的缺点而爱男人;如果男人的缺点足够多,女人什么事都可以原谅他们,哪怕是他们的智力。
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
女人代表着物质战胜了理智,正如男人代表着理智战胜了道德。
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
年轻人想要有信仰,但他们却没有;老年人不想要有信仰,但却办不到。
我要写一下这个的来源。
有删节和补充。
http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/wanyuanyi/17113[ 此贴被六六在05-01-2009 20:49重新编辑 ]