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Yan asks:
Could you help me with the meaning of "there is too much
of it" as in the following passage marked in capital letters? What's the
exact Chinese for it? Can you give me other examples?
The original goes like this: A mountain 2,000 feet high would be a
horrible monster here, as wrong as a plain 400 miles long, a river as
broad as the Mississippi. In America the whole scale is too big, except
for aviators THERE IS ALWAYS TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING. There you find
yourself in a region that is merely part of one colossal plain. You can
spend a long, hard day in the Rockies simply traveling up or down one
valley, you can wander across prairie country that has the desolating
immensity of the ocean. Everything is too big; THERE IS TOO MUCH OF IT.
And here I have another question: does the word "as" play a contrast
role in the following sentence? The original: The beauty of our country -
or at least all of it south of the Highlands - is hard to define AS it is
easy to enjoy. Hope I didn't bother you too much.
My comments:
Never mind
the bother, Yan. Just fire away with your questions and let me handle the
rest at my discretion.
That is to say, I may choose to answer your letter at length or in
brief, or not at all, but the discretion must be mine and mine alone.
Otherwise, I may begin to wonder if I have given you too much freedom (to
write in), and freedom, you see, can be too much of a good thing.
Obviously I may not have the time to answer every question from every
reader, but I give y'all the freedom to write in and post a question any
way - and with it the possibility of being frustrated in case any letter
went unanswered or were not answered in a satisfactory fashion, either in
terms of detail, length or timeliness. You see, I understand the
consequences both ways.
We must therefore trust each other to be doing their best without being
excessively demanding. Otherwise, like I said, I may wonder whether this
freedom (I give you readers to write in) isn't too much of a good thing.
Too much of a good thing is a phrase dating from the 15th Century,
according to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Shakespeare used it in
As You Like It: "Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?"
This is the answer for your first question. When there's too much of
something, there's an excess of it. And when there's an excess of it (too
much sugar, for example, in coffee), it often becomes less desirable than
it normally is.
Thyroid hormone, for instance, is the secretion by the thyroid gland
which regulates the metabolism - the rate at which our body burns fuel.
Normal amount of the hormone is good and necessary. But when there's too
much of it, the metabolism becomes too fast. And that may lead to
hyperthyroidism, a condition under which people may lose weight despite
eating more. So therefore, thyroid hormone can be too much of a good thing
- it may do you more harm than good.
In Chinese idiom, we find a similar expression in Guo You Bu Ji （过犹不及）,
meaning anything too much, or too little, is no good.
As for your second question, Yan, you should consult the dictionary -
look up "as" as a conjunction. I may add that the way you framed the
question suggests that you've more or less got it right.
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