【原著选段】

The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring: I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colours of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder: I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and enriched its characterisation: drama, novel, poem in rhyme, poem in prose, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I touched I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty: to truth itself I gave what is false no less than what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence. I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.

【朱纯深译本】

诸神几乎给了我一切。天赋、名望、地位、才华、气概。我让艺术成为一门哲学，让哲学成为一门艺术；我改变人的心灵、物的颜色；我所言所行，无不使人惊叹；戏剧，这本是最为客观的艺术形式，在我手里却成为像抒情诗和商籁诗那样抒个人情怀的表达方式，同时范围更为开阔、人物更为丰富；戏剧、小说、韵律诗、散文诗、微妙含蓄或奇妙非凡的对白，我笔之所至，无不以美的新形态展现其美；我让真实本身不但显其真，同样也显其假，亦真亦假，以此作为它天经地义的内涵，显明了无论真假，都不过是心智存在的形式。我视艺术为最高的现实，而生活不过是一个虚构的形态；我唤醒了这个世纪的想象力，它便在我身边创造神话与传奇；万象之繁，我一言可以蔽之，万物之妙， 我一语足以道破。

【读书笔记】

1、distinguished a.卓越的，杰出的；著名的；地位高的；显得高贵的
【举例】a distinguished performance 出色的表演
He is distinguished for his erudition. 他以博学而著称。
a distinguished guest 贵宾
He looks distinguished in his custom-made suit. 他穿上定制的西服显得气度不凡。
【相关词汇】
distinguish v.区分；辨认出
distinguish A from B 使A区别于B
distinguish oneself 出人头地，享有盛名 

2、alter v.改变，改动
【举例】alter one"s attitude 改变态度
alter one"s mind 改变主意
alter course 改道

3、enrich v.使富裕；使丰富；装饰，美化；浓缩
【举例】The expanding economy enriched the peasants. 不断发展的经济使农民们富裕起来。
Foreign words and phrases have enriched the English language. 众多外来词丰富了英语。
enrich the walls with frescoes 用壁画装饰墙壁
enriched uranium 浓缩铀

4、fiction n.小说；虚构的事；谎言
【举例】Truth is often stranger than fiction. 真相往往比小说还要离奇。
The reason he gave was pure fiction. 他给出的理由完全是杜撰。