Luck
by Mark Twain
《运气》一书，给我们讲解了从倒霉蛋到幸运儿的魔法历程：它的第一层含义是“运其所能”，即调动个人最大的积极性，挖掘个人最大的潜力;第二层寓意是“运筹帷幄”，即认真做好统筹规划、决胜千里。正如书中所说，偶然和运气是完全不同的两个概念，好运是可以由我们自己操纵的。幸运不是与生俱来的。创造好运是一种技能，是一种可以掌控的生活态度。如果“偶然”总是在一些人身上发生，那么他一定是掌握了操纵运气的秘密。在《运气》中，就有“运气”制造的种种秘诀，如保持好奇心、找到自己想要的、成为时间的主人、让自己像个幸运者、不要树敌、让施与受保持平衡、善用直觉等。
[NOTE--This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth. -- M. T.]
It was at a banquet in London in honour of one of the two or three conspicuously illustrious English military names of this generation. For reasons which will presently appear, I will withhold his real name and titles, and call him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, Y. C., K. C. B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a renowned name! There say the man, in actual flesh, whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly to the zenith from a Crimean battlefield, to remain forever celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demi-god; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people and flowing toward him.
The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of mine--clergyman now, but had spent the first half of his life in the camp and field and as an instructor in the military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have been talking about a veiled and singular light glimmered in his eyes and he leaned down and muttered confidentially to me--indicating the hero of the banquet with a gesture:
"Privately--his glory is an accident-- just a product of incredible luck."/---he’s an absolute fool.
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverand was a man of strict veracity and that his judgment of men was good. therefore I knew, beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this hero: he was a fool. so I meant to find out, at a convenient moment, how the Reverend, all solitary and alone, had his discovered the secret.
