公平对待命运

　　我们总是在抱怨命运，生活中不公平、不平等的事情有很多。要知道，再多的抱怨也是徒劳无功的，因为你无法改变什么的。

　　事实是，自然总是将天赋公平地分配给人们，比人们通常认为的还要不偏不倚，很少过分地慷慨!也很少吝啬。人与人之间的巨大差异是由于教育和环境使然。文化修养改良了天赋，机遇环境诱发了天赋。正视你自己的命运就是正视你自己。

　　Most people complain of fortune, few of nature; and the kinder they think the latter has been to them, the more they murmur at what they call the injustice of the former.

　　Why have not I the riches, the rank, the power, of such and such, is the commonexpostulation with fortune; but why have not I the merit, the talents, the wit, or the beauty, of such and such others, is a reproach rarely or never made to nature.

　　The truth is, that nature, seldom profuse, and seldom niggardly, has distributed her gifts more equally than she is generally supposed to have done. Education and situation make the great difference. Culture improves, and occasions elicit, natural talents I make no doubt but that there are potentially, if I may use that pedantic word, many Bacons, Lockes, Newtons, Caesars, Cromwells, and Marlboroughs at the ploughtail behind counters, and, perhaps, even among the nobility; but the soil must be cultivated, and the season favourable, for the fruit to have all its spirit and flavour.

　　If sometimes our common parent has been a little partial, and not kept the scales quite even; if one preponderates too much, we throw into the lighter a due counterpoise ofvanity, which never fails to set all right. Hence it happens, that hardly any one man would, without reverse, and in every particular, change with any other.

　　Though all are thus satisfied with the dispensations of nature, how few listen to her voice! How to follow her as a guide! In vain she points out to us the plain and direct way to truth, vanity, fancy, affection, and fashion assume her shape and wind us through fairy-ground to folly and error.