➀ 婚姻是一座围城，城外的人想进去，城里的人想出来。
Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out.
➁ 有人失恋了，会把他们的伤心立刻像叫化子的烂腿，血淋淋地公开展览，博人怜悯，或者事过境迁，像战士的金疮旧斑，脱衣指示，使人惊佩。
Some people when jilted will immediately display their broken hearts in public and drip with blood like a beggar’s scraped legs to stir pity. Or else, after the whole affair is over, they will pull up their clothes in the manner of a veteran and point it out like an old battle scar to arouse awe and wonder.
➂ 可是心里忘不了他，好比牙齿钳去了，齿腔空着作痛，更好比花盆里种的小树，要连根拔它，这花盆就得迸裂。
But deep down she could not forget him. It was like the gum left empty and aching after a tooth is extracted, or like a small tree in a flower pot. To pull it up roots and all, one must smash the pot.
➃ 老头子恋爱听说像老房子着了火，烧起来没有救的。
An old man’s love was said to be like an old house set ablaze. Once it started burning, there was no saving it.
➄ 她跟辛楣的长期认识并不会日积月累地成为恋爱，好比冬季每天的气候罢，你没法把今天的温度加在昨天的上面，好等明天积成个和暖的春日。
It must be said that her long years of friendship with Hsin-mei did not add up to love, just as in winter no one can add today’s temperature to yesterday’s to come up with a warm spring day for tomorrow.
➅ 李先生脸上少了那副黑眼镜，两只大白眼睛像剥掉壳的煮熟鸡蛋。
Without his dark glasses on his face, Li’s large, white eyes looked like two shelled hard-boiled eggs.
➆ 孩子不足两岁，塌鼻子，眼睛两条斜缝，眉毛高高在上，跟眼睛远隔得彼此要害相思病，活像报上讽刺画里的中国人的脸。
Her son, not yet two years old, had a snub nose, two slanted slits for eyes, and eyebrows so high up and removed from the eyes that the eyebrows and the eyes must have pined for each other – a living replica of the Chinese face in newspaper caricatures.
➇ 这一张文凭，仿佛有亚当、夏娃下身那片树叶的功用，可以遮羞包丑。
The diploma, it seemed, would function the same as Adam and Eve’s figleaf. It could hid a person’s shame and wrap up his disgrace.
⑨ 忠厚老实人的恶毒，像饭里的砂砾或者出骨鱼片里未净的刺，会给人一种不期待的伤痛。
The viciousness of a kind, simple-hearted soul, like gritty sand in the rice or splinters in a deboned fish, can give a person unexpected pain.
⑩ 事实上，一个人的缺点正像猴子的尾巴，猴子蹲在地面的时候，尾巴是看不见的，直到他向树上爬，就把后部供大家瞻仰，可是红臀长尾巴本来就有，并非地位爬高了的新标识。
A person’s shortcomings are just like a monkey’s tail. When it’s squatting on the ground, its tail is hidden from view, but as soon as it climbs a tree, it exposes its backside to everyone. Nevertheless, the long tail and red bottom were there all the time. They aren’t just a mark of having climbed to a higher position.
⑪ 假使（方鸿渐的呼噜声）真灌成片子，那声气哗啦哗啦，又像风涛澎湃，又像狼吞虎咽，中间还夹着一些又尖又细的声音，忽高忽低，袅袅不绝。有时这一条丝高上去、高上去，细得、细得像放足的风筝线要断了，不知怎么像过一个峰尖，又降落安稳下来。
If a recording really had been made, it would have been a thunderous racket, like the roaring of waves or the gobbling and gulping of wolves or tigers, accompanied by a thin, sharp thread of sound in the middle that rose and fell abruptly without stop. Sometimes the thread rose higher and higher, getting thinner and thinner like a kite-string about to snap. Then for some reason it would descend and stabilize as if reaching a peak.
⑫ 鸿渐研究出西洋人丑得跟中国人不同：中国人丑得像造物者偷工减料的结果，潦草塞责的丑；西洋人丑像造物者恶意的表现，存心跟脸上五官开玩笑，所以丑得有计划，有作用。
Hung-chien had found from close study that Westerners are ugly in a different way from Chinese: Chinese ugliness seems to be the result of the Creator’s having skimped on time and materials. It is a slapdash, perfunctorily put together ugliness. Westerners’ ugliness seems a mark of the Creator’s spite. He has purposely set out the play jokes with the facial features. The ugliness thus has a plan and a motive behind it.
