西奧多·羅斯福/Theodore Roosevelt
西奧多·羅斯福（1858—1919），美國第26任總統、作家、探險家和軍事家，畢業於哈佛大學，曾發表《勤奮地生活》演說，旨在針對19世紀末美國驕奢**逸、貪圖享樂之風盛行，藉此文以遏製當時的腐敗現象，這篇《艱辛的人生》也反映了他這種反對怠惰安逸、崇尚奮鬥人生的思想。
A life of slothful ease,a life of that peace which springs merely f rom lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things,is a s little worthy of a nation as an individual.
We do not admire the man of timid peace.We admire the man who embod ies victorious efforts,the man who never wrongs his neighbor,who is pr ompt to help a friend,but who has those virile qualities necessary to w in in the stern strife of actual life.It is hard to fail,but it is wor se never to have tried to succeed.In this life we get nothing save by e ffort.Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has be en effort stored up in the past.A man can be free from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to g ood purpose.If the freedom thus purchased is used aright,and the man s till does actual work,though of a different kind,whether as a writer o r a general,whether in the field of politics or in the field of explora tion and adventure,he shows he deserves his good fortune.
But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labo r as a period,not of preparation,but of mere enjoyment,even though pe rhaps not of vicious enjoyment,he shows that he is simply a cumberer on the earth's surface;and he surely unfits himself to hold his own place with his fellows,if the need to do so should again arise.A mere life o f ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life,and,above all,it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in t he world.
As it is with the individual,so it is with the nation.It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history.Thrice happ y is the nation that has a glorious history.Far better it is to dare mi ghty things,to win glorious triumphs,even though checkered by failure,than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suf fer much,because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither vict ory nor defeat.