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塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯:节俭·摘录 166

塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯《节俭》· Thrift · 投资

Horace Walpole has said that Queen Caroline's patronage of Stephen Duck, the thresher poet, ruined twenty men, who all turned poets. It was not so with the early success of Hugh Miller. "There is no more fatal error," he says, "into which a working man of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming himself too good for his humble employments; and yet it is a mistake as common as it is fatal. I had already seen several poor wrecked mechanics, who, believing themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they could alone live in independence as beneath them, and become in consequence little better than mendicants,--too good to work for their bread, but not too good virtually to beg it; and looking upon them as beacons of warning, I determined that, with God's help, I should give their error a wide offing, and never associate the idea of meanness with an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be independent."

出处: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
定位:Excerpt 166 · 核对日期:2026-10-19 · 核验:短摘录

白话

沃波尔说过,卡罗琳王后捧红了打谷诗人斯蒂芬·达克,结果二十个人都改行去当诗人,全毁了。休·米勒没走这条路。他说,有文学爱好的工人最容易犯的致命错误,就是觉得自己不该干那些卑微的活计;这错太常见,也太要命。他见过好几个落魄的技工,自认是诗人,看不起唯一能让他们独立谋生的手艺,最后差不多成了乞丐——干活的资格嫌低,讨饭的资格倒不嫌低。他拿这些人当警钟,决心离这种错远远的,绝不把诚实谋生看成下贱,也绝不觉得自己好到不该独立。

上下文

斯迈尔斯《节俭》引休·米勒的自述,讲文学青年看不起本行手艺而落魄的教训。

今日一问

你有没有因为“我值得更好的”而嫌弃过眼下能养活自己的那份工作?

公版作品;原文逐字取自 Project Gutenberg,仅摘录段落并附全书链接。

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