An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. To have many of these is to be spiritually rich. Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre unless we have some interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough footway where they may very well break their shins.

参考译文:
渴望是永远的乐趣，一笔如地产般真实稳固的财富，用之不尽，取之不竭。每年我们都会因为拥有渴望而充满活力。一个人如有许多希望，精神便会富足。人生只不过是一场单调乏味且编导拙劣的戏，除非我们对这戏有些兴趣;对于既没有艺术细胞也没有科学细胞的人来说，这个世界只不过是各种颜色的堆积，或者是一条崎岖小路，一不小心就会摔伤小腿。