Mustn't beauty be shallow if it can be painted on? Mustn't beauty be a delusion if it can blink off and on like a flickering bulb? A wedding gown will eventually grow musty in a mothproof box; flowers will fade, and the glow will seep out of the brightest day. I'll grant that we may be fooled by facades, may be led astray by our fickle eyes. But I've been married to Ruth for thirty years, remember. I've watched my daughter grow for twenty-four years, my son for twenty, and these loved ones have taught me more hopeful possibility. Season after season I've knelt over fiddleheads breaking ground, studied the wings of swallowtails nectaring on blooms, spied skeins of geese high in the sky. There are books I've read, pieces of music I've listened to, ideas I've revisited time and again with fresh delight. Having lived among people and places and works of imagination whose beauty runs all the way through; I feel certain that genuine beauty is more than skin deep, that real beauty dwells not in my own eye alone but out in the world.
如果美可以画在画板上，难道它就一定不会肤浅？如果美就像灯泡那样，可以开开关关难道它就一定不会是一种错觉吗？婚纱最终会在防蛀的箱子中发霉，花儿会凋谢，最明亮的一天也终会暗淡。我同意我们会被片面的见解所迷惑，也会被我们易变的观察所误导。但我不会忘记，我和鲁思结婚已经30年，我看着女儿24年的成长，儿子20的成长。这些我深爱的人使我懂得了一种更富希望的可能性。冬去春来，我蹲在蕨类植物旁边，观察它们如何破土而出，我研究吸吮着花蕊蜜汁的凤尾蝶的翅膀、观察在天上高高飞翔的一群群大雁。还有我读过的书、听过的乐曲，一次又一次让我充满新鲜喜悦感的想法。与充满美的人、地方和创作的作品生活在一起，使我深信真正的美绝不肤浅，这种美也不仅存在于我的眼中，而是客观地存在于我们身外的世界。
While I can speak with confidence of what I feel in the presence of beauty, I must go out on speculative limb if I'm to speak about the qualities in the world that call it forth. Far out on that limb; therefore, let me suggest that a creature, an action, a landscape, a line of poetry or music, a scientific formula, or anything else that might seem beautiful, seems so because it gives us a glimpse of the underlying order of things. The swirl of a galaxy and the swirl of a gown resemble one another not merely by accident, but because they follow the grain of the universe. That grain runs through our own depths. What we find beautiful accords with our most profound sense of how things ought to be. Ordinarily, we live in a tension between our perceptions and our desires. When we encounter beauty, that tension vanishes, and outward and inward im ages agree.
我可以充满信心地谈论我对美的感受，但是若要让我谈论使美产生的事物的特质，我只能进行不充分的推断。因而，这也许是很不充分的推断。但我想说，一种生物、一种举止、一种地貌、一行诗、一段乐曲、一道科学公式或其他美丽的事物，之所以看起来美丽，是因为它们能让我们窥见事物隐含的序。星系的旋涡同裙摆的旋转的类似并非偶然。它们都沿循着宇宙的本质。这种本质存于我们的内在。我们认为美的事物总是与我们内心的感觉相吻合。多时候，我们都生活在愿望和理性的矛盾中。当我们发现美的时候，矛盾消失，内在和外在形象获得了统一。
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