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What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
再者，父母这样做是希望我不会过穷日子，所以我不能责怪他们。他们经历了贫穷，我后来也一度贫穷，所以我很理解他们，因为贫穷并不是一种高贵的经历。贫穷会让人感觉恐惧、有压力，有时甚至让人感觉沮丧。贫穷意味着说不尽的羞辱和艰辛。靠自己的努力摆脱贫穷值得自豪，只有傻瓜才会将贫穷浪漫化。
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
像你们这么大时我最害怕的不是贫穷，而是失败。
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
像你们这么大时，尽管我明显缺乏在大学学习的动力，花大量时间在咖啡馆写小说，用于听课的时间很少，但我却有通过考试的本领。多年来，考试一直是衡量我和同龄人成功的标准。
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
我不会笨到因为你们年轻、有才华并且受过良好的教育，就认为你们从来没有经受过困难或心碎的时刻。才华和指挥并不能使人摆脱命运的反复无常；我从来没有认为在座的每一个人一直以来都享有优越和满足。
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.
然而，即将从哈弗毕业这一事实就意味着你们很少会经历失败。
