(2011年)
When flying over Nepal, it’s easy to soar in your imagination and pretend you’re tiny — a butterfly — and drifting above one of those three dimensional topographical maps architects use, the circling contour lines replaced by the terraced rice paddies that surround each high ridge.
Nepal is a small country, and from the windows of our plane floating eastward at 12, 000 feet, one can see clearly the brilliant white mirage of the high Himalayas thirty miles off the left window.
Out the right window, the view is of three or four high terraced ridges giving sudden way to the plains of India beyond.
There were few roads visible below, most transportation in Nepal being by foot along ancient trails that connect and bind country together. There is also a network of dirt airstrips, which was fortunate for me, as I had no time for the two-and-a-half week trek to my destination. I was on a flight to the local airport.
(2010年)
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by the power of dreams. There were the same mountains and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there was interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature was to be seen except that in the green churchyard there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the graves, and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as I had really seen them, a little before sunrise in the same summer, when that child died.
(2009年)
We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather h
ere. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst – though not all – of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.
However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world's leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler's threat: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."
So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun.
(interspace翻译2008年)
But, as has been true in many other cases, when they were at last married, the most ideal
of situations was found to have been changed to the most practical. Instead of having shared their original duties, and as school-boys would say, going halves, they discovered that the cares of life had been doubled. This led to some distressing moments for both our friends; they understood suddenly that instead of dwelling in heaven they were still upon earth, and had made themselves slaves to new laws and limitations. Instead of being freer and happier than ever before, they had assumed new responsibilities; they had established a new household, and must fulfill in some way or another the obligations of it. They looked back with affection to their engagement; they had been longing to have each other to themselves, apart from the world, but it seemed they never felt so keenly that they were still units in modern society.
(2007年)
Scientific and technological advances are enabling us to comprehend the furthest reaches of the cosmos, the most basic constituents of matter, and the miracle of life.
At the same time, today, the actions, and inaction, of human beings imperil not only life on
the planet, but the very life of the planet.
Globalization is making the world smaller, faster and richer. Still, 9/11 and avian flu remind us that a smaller, faster world is not necessarily a safer world.
Our world is bursting with knowledge – but desperately in need of wisdom. Now, when sound bites are getting shorter, when instant messages crowd out essays, and when individual lives grow more crazy, college graduates capable of deep reflection are what our world needs.
For all these reasons I believed – and I believe even more strongly today – in the unique and irreplaceable mission of universities.
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