最新Unit 13 Marriage课文翻译综合教程四

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I’ve jumped out of the frying

-pan 

Into the blooming fire. 

3 

No 

difficulties? 

Why, 

the 

very 

nigger-minstrels 

of 

my 

boyhood 

used 

to 

open 

their performance with a chorus which began: 

Married! Married! O pity those who’re married.

Those who go and take a wife must be very green. 

4 

It is possible that the comedians exaggerated, and that Victorian wives were not 

all viragos with pokers, who beat their tipsy husbands for staying out too late. But at 

least 

they 

and 

their 

audiences 

refrained 

from 

painting 

marriage 

as 

an 

inevitable 

Paradise. Even the clergy would go no farther than to say that marriages were made 

in Heaven. That they did not believe that marriage necessarily ended there is shown 

by the fact that one of them wrote a “best

-

seller” bearing the title 

How to Be Happy 

Though Married

. 

5 

I 

doubt, 

indeed, 

whether 

common 

opinion 

in 

any 

age 

has 

ever 

looked 

on 

marriage as an untroubled Paradise. I consulted a dictionary of quotations on the 

subject and discovered that few of the opinions quoted were rose-coloured. These 

opinions, 

it 

may 

be 

objected, 

are 

the 

opinions 

of 

unconventional 

people, 

but 

it 

is 

also true that they are opinions treasured and kept alive by conventional people. We 

have 

the 

reputed 

saying 

of 

the 

henpecked 

Socrates, 

for 

example, 

when 

asked 

whether it was better to marry or not: “Whichever you do, you will repent.” We have 

Montaigne writing: “It happens as one sees in cages. The birds 

outside despair of 

ever getting in; those inside are equally desirous of getting out.” Bacon is no more 

prenuptial 

with 

his 

caustic 

quotation: 

“He 

was 

reputed 

one 

of 

the 

wise 

men 

that 

made answer to the question when a man should marry: ‘A young man not ye

t; an 

elder man not at all.’” Burton is far from encouraging! “One was never married, and 

that’s 

his 

hell; 

another 

is, 

and 

that’s 

his 

plague.” 

Pepys 

scribbled 

in 

his 

diary: 

“Strange to say what delight we married people have to see these poor folk decoyed 

into our condition.”

6 

The 

pious 

Jeremy 

Taylor 

was 

as 

keenly 

aware 

that 

marriage 

is 

not 

all 

bliss. 

“Marriage,” he declared, “hath in it less of beauty and more of safety than the single 

life 

－

it hath more care but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller 

of 

sorrows 

and 

fuller 

of 

joys.” 

The 

sentimental 

and 

optimistic 

Steele 

can 

do 

no 

better than: “The marriage state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the 

completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving i

n this life.”

7 

Rousseau 

denied 

that 

a 

perfect marriage 

had 

ever 

been 

known. 

“I 

have 

often