世界十大著名演讲 泰戈尔：清华讲演（附英文节选）(4)

3.

The seed, in which life remains self-contained, does not know its complete truth. Even when the sheath bursts, it is not known in what shape its life will manifest itself, what fruit the branches will bear.

4.

What is the greatest fact of this age? It is that the messenger of an immense future has come; he has knocked at our gate and all the bars have given way. Our doors have burst open. The human races have come out of their enclosures. They have gathered together.

5.

There are no longer walls to hide us. We have, at length, to prove our worth to the whole world, not merely to admiring groups of our own people. We must justify our own existence. We must show, each in our own civilization, that which is universal.

6.

Now I am in China, I ask you, I ask myself, what have you got, what out of your own house can you bring in homage to this new age? You must answer this question. Do you know your own mind? Your own culture? What is the best and most permanent in your own history? You must know at least that, if you are to save yourselves from the greatest of insults, the insult of obscurity, of rejection. Bring out your light, add it to this great festival of lamps of world culture.

7.

Love gives beauty to everything it touches. Not greed and utility; they produce offices, but not dwelling houses.

8.

To be able to love material things, to clothe them with tender grace, and yet not be attached to them, this is a great service.

9.

Providence expects that we should make this world our own, and not live in it as though it were a rented tenement. We can only make it our own by some service, and that service is to lend it love and beauty from our soul.