In China letters are respected not merely to a degree but in a sense which must seem, I think, to you unintelligible and overstrained. But there is a reason for it. Our poets and literary men have taught their successors, for long generations, to look for good not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous activity, but in trained, a choice, an exquisite appreciation of the most simple and universal relations of life. To feel, and in order to feel to express, or at least to understand the expression of all that is lovely in Nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit garden, the shallow of trees on the turf, almond blossom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the guitar; these and the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides for ever away, with its freight of music and light, into the shadow and hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale---all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature. 

参考译文：

    在中国，文学之受到尊重，不仅达到一定程度，而且在某种意义上，我想，你们一定认为难以理解，甚至近似沉重。可是，这是有其道理的。长期以来，我们的诗人和文人总是告诉继承者们，美好的东西不在于权力，不在于富有，也不在于那些繁琐小事，而是要以受过教育的，有选择的，深邃的眼光去欣赏那些生活关系中哪怕是最简单的，最普通的事情。去感受，去表达这种感受，或者至少是去理解自然界里可爱的东西和人们所有的痛楚和情感，对我们来说，这就够了，这就是结果。月光下花园里的一支玫瑰，夏日里树木投下草坪的一片阴影，松柏的清香，酒杯或吉他；这些以及生死的悲情，长长的拥抱，无奈的伸出的双臂，转眼而逝的瞬间，带着那些音乐和光线，永远地消逝在对蹉跎往事的阴影里，我们所拥有的一切，从我们身边擦肩而过的事物，从眼前飞过的鸟儿以及随风飘过的发香，对所有这一切，我们的心灵会有一种感受，而对这种感受做出的反应就是我们所谓的文学。 （本文英文原文来自《英语世界》）