常春藤名家散文背诵选.doc

常青藤名家散文背诵选Unit 1 A Great Friend一位伟大的朋友As I am now a senior high school student, I have a great many friends, but there is one whom I prize over all the rest. I first made his acquaintance when I began to go to school. He has been my constant companion ever since.Though he is serious in appearance, he never fails to be interesting. Often he is clever, sometimes even merry and gay. He is the most knowledgeable friend a person could have. He knows virtually every language of the world, all the events of history, and the words of all the great poets and philosophers. A kindly benefactor, he is admired and enjoyed by everyone who makes his acquaintance.To me, he has been a great teacher as well as a friend. He first taught me the secrets of my own language and then those of others. With these keys he showed us how to unlock all the arts and sciences of man.My friend is endlessly patient. Dull though I may be, I can return to him again and again, and he is always ready to teach me. When I am bored, he entertains me. When I am dispirited, he lifts me up. When I am lonely, he keeps me company. He is a friend not only to me but to millions around the world. Shall I tell you his name? His name is “reading”. Unit 2 The Joy of Labour劳动之乐Wise men of ancient times and successful men of today have told us that labor is sweet. Its reward is not material gain but what one becomes by it. Work does much more for us than just giving us a living; it gives us our life and the reason for living. The real joys of life come from doing something and doing it well.All of us hope for success, but it is illusive and hard to keep. It nearly always slips away from one like sand through the fingers, like water through a leaky pail, unless it is held tight by hard work, day by day, night by night, year in year out. Everyone who fears failure should work harder and harder with a faithful heart as long as he lasts. Unit 3 Were Just Beginning我们正在起跑点Charles F. Kettering“We are reading the first verse of the first chapter of a book whose pages are infinite”I do not know who wrote these words, but I have always liked them as a reminder that the future can be anything we want to make it. we can take the mysterious, hazy future and carve out of it anything that we can imagine, just as a sculptor carves a statue from a shapeless stone.We are all in the position of the farmer. If we plant a good seed, we reap a good harvest. If our seed is poor and full of weeds, we reap a useless crop. If we plant nothing at all, we harvest nothing at all.I want the future to be better than the past. I dont want it contaminated by the mistakes and errors with which history is filled. We should all be concerned about the future because that is where we will spend the remainder of our lives.The past is gone and static. Nothing we can do will change it. The future is before us and dynamic. Everything we do will affect it. Each day brings with it new frontiers, in our homes and in our businesses, if we will only recognize them. We are just at the beginning of the progress in every field of human endeavor. Unit 4 Advice to a Young Man给年轻人的建议Robert Jones BurdetteRemember, my son, you have to work. Whether you handle a pick or a pen, a wheel-barrow or a set of books, you must work. If you look around, you will see the men who are the most able to live the rest of their days without work are the men who work the hardest. Dont be afraid of killing yourself with overwork. It is beyond your power to do that on the sunny side of thirty. They die sometimes, but it is because they quit work at six in the evening, and do not go home until two in the morning. It is the interval that kills, my son. The work gives you an appetite for your meals; it lends solidity to your slumbers; it gives you a perfect and grateful appreciation of a holiday.There are young men who do not work, but the world is not proud of them. It does not know their names, even. Nobody likes them; the great, busy world does not know that they are there. So find out what you want to be and do, and take off your coat and make a dust in the world. The busier you are, the less harm you will be apt to get into, the sweeter will be your sleep, the brighter and happier your holidays, and the better satisfied will the world be with you. Unit 5 The Happy Door开启快乐之门Mildred CramHappiness is like a pebble dropped into a pool or set in motion an ever-widening circle of ripples. As Stevenson has said, being happy is a duty. There is no exact definition of the word happiness. Happy people are happy for all sorts of reasons. The key is not wealth or physical well-being, since we find beggars, invalids and so-called failures who are extremely happy. Being happy is a sort of unexpected dividend. But staying happy is an accomplishment, a triumph of soul and character. It is not selfish to strive for it. It is, indeed, a duty to ourselves and others. Being unhappy is like an infections disease; it causes people to shrink away from the sufferer. He soon finds himself alone, miserable and embittered. There is, however, a cure so simple as to seem, at first glance, ridiculous: if you dont feel happy, pretend to be!It works. Before long you will find that instead of repelling people, you attract them. you discover how deeply rewarding it is to be the center of wider and wider circles of good will.Then the make-believe becomes a reality. You possess the secret of peace of mind, and can forget yourself in being of service to others.Being happy, once it is realized as a duty and established as a habit, opens doors into unimaginable gardens thronged with grateful friends. Uint 6 Companionship of Books以书为伴A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as the company he keeps; for there is a companionship of books as well as of men; and one should always live in the best company, whether it be of books or of men.A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the same today that it always was, and it will never change. It is the most patient and cheerful of companions. It does not turn its back upon us in times of adversity or distress. It always receives us with the same kindness, amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age.Men often discover their affinity to each other by the love they each have for a book. The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author. They live in him together, and he, in them.A good book is often the best urn of a life enshrining the best that life could think out, for the world of a mans life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the best books are treasuries of good words, the golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our constant companions and comforters. Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human effort. Temples and statues decay, but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their authors minds ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. Books introduce into the best society; they bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe. Unit7 Friendship友谊Orison Swett MardenNo young man starting life could have better capital than plenty of friends. They will strengthen his credit, support him in every great effort, and make him what, unaided, he could never be. Friends of the right sort will help him moreto be happy and successfulthan much money or great learning.Friendship is no one-sided affair. There can be no friendship without reciprocity. One cannot receive all and give nothing, or give all and receive nothing, and expect to experience the joy and fullness of true companionship. Those who would make friends must cultivate the qualities which are admired and which attract. If you are mean, stingy and selfish, nobody will admire you. You must cultivate generosity and large-heartedness; you must be magnanimous and tolerant; you must have positive qualities, for a negative, shrinking, apologizing, roundabout man is despised. You must believe in yourself. If you do not, others will not believe in you. You must look upward and be hopeful, cheery, and optimistic. No one will be attracted to a gloomy pessimist.Unit8 A Key to Happiness快乐的钥匙James T. ManganTo help others, you dont have to be an efficient expert in the art; the main thing is the intention. You may be crude and clumsy, wasteful and ineffective, but if you sincerely try to help, your attempt produces nothing but good. The one you are trying to help knows your intention and is strengthened and encouraged by the magic of your sharing. In nearly every case, your simple desire to help, converted into action, produces the good sought. But perhaps the greatest good is the good that you yourself get out of the attempt. Service to others delivers more joy to you than you deliver to them. In doing good, you free yourself from the terrible burden of self; you escape from yourself into a clean world of joy and light. The good you simply try to do, regardless of the outcome, is always a success inside yourself.Unselfish giving is your most efficient formula for happiness, for you have embraced eternity instead of Self; you have felt Life, and you are now the world bigger than you were before you began the project. Unit9 The Love of Beauty爱美AnonymousThe love beauty of love is an essential part of all healthy human nature. It is a moral quality. The absence of it is not an assured ground of condemnation, but the presence of it is an invariable sign of goodness of heart. In proportion to the degree in which it is felt will probably be the degree in which nobleness and beauty of character will be attained.Natural beauty is an all-pervading presence. The universe is its temple. It unfolds into the numberless flowers of spring. It waves in the branches of trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and the sea. It gleams from the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects but the oceans, the mountains, the clouds, the stars, the rising and the setting sunall overflow with beauty. This beauty is so precious, and so congenial to our tenderest and noblest feeling, that it is painful to think of the multitude of people living in the midst of it and yet remaining almost blind to it.All persons should seek to become acquainted with the beauty in nature. There is not a worm we tread upon, nor a leaf that dances merrily as it falls before the autumn winds, but calls for our study and admiration. The power to appreciate beauty not merely increases out sources of happinessit enlarges our moral nature, too. Beauty calms our restlessness and dispels our cares. Go into the fields or the woods, spend a summer day by the sea or the mountains, and all your little perplexities and anxieties will vanish. Listen to sweet music, and your foolish fears and petty jealousies will pass away. The beauty of the world helps us to seek and find the beauty of goodness.Unit10 For the Sake of Other Men为别人而活Albert EinsteinStrange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other menabove all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.To ponder interminably over the reason for ones own existence or the meaning of life in general seems to me, from an objective point of view, to be sheer folly. And yet everyone holds certain ideals by which he guides his aspiration and his judgment. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort and happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle. Unit11 You Are What You Do行为决定命运Mayling SoongIf the past has taught us anything, it is that every cause brings effectevery action has a consequence. This thought, in my opinion, is the moral foundation of the universe; it applies equally in this world and the next.We Chinese have a saying: “If a man plants melons, he will reap melons; if he sows beans, he will reap beans.” And this is true of every mans life: good begets good, and evil leads to evil.True enough, the sun shines on the saint and sinner alike, and too often it seems that the wicked wax and prosper. But we can say with certitude that, with the individual as with the nation, the flourishing of the wicked is an illusion, for, unceasingly, life keeps books on us all.In the end, we are all the sum total of our actions. Character cannot be counterfeited, nor can it be put on and cast off as if it were a garment to meet the whim of the moment. Like the markings on wood which are ingrained in the very heart of the tree, character requires time and nurture for growth and development.Thus also, day by day, we write our own destiny, for inexorably we become what we do. This, I believe, is the supreme logic and the law of life. Unit12 Youth青春Samuel UllmanYouth is not just a stage of life; it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions. It is the freshness of the deep spring of life.Youth means the predominance of courage over timidity, of adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despairthese bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human beings heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and the starlike things, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what-next and the joy of the game of living.You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair. Unit13 Have Faith in Others相信别人Faith BaldwinBelief is a happier state of mind than doubt and suspicion. By this I live, for if I dont have faith in others, who will believe in me? I would rather believe in a thousand people, friends and strangers, and have 999 fail me than not believe. If many fail me, I remember how many I failed.This is not to say that the blind belief of sentimentality, the so-called tolerance of the dishonest and vicious, is sensible or rewarding. There are some dark corners which do not react to sweetness and light. Belief in people should be accomplished with open eyes and clarity of judgment. But when your judgment proves bad rather than good, its no reason to walk thereafter with suspicion as a companion. None knows anothers heart, his grief, his struggle, his despair and motivation. Not all our geese become swans, but one swan atones for many flocks of geese. All men share pain and mortality; some bear these better than others. And multitudes have perished spiritually for the lack of anothers belief in them.So, I would rather be disappointed than afraid of disappointment.Unit14 True Nobility真正的高贵Ernest HemingwayIn a calm sea every man is a polite.But all sunshine without shade, all pleasure without pain, is not life at all. Take the lot of happiestit is a tangled yarn. Bereavements and blessings, one following another, make us sad and blessed by turns. Even death itself makes life more loving. Men come closed to their true selves in the sober moments of life, under the shadows of sorrow and loss. In the affairs of life or of business, it is not intellect that tells so much as character, not brains so much as heart, not genius so much as self-control, patience, and discipline, regulated by judgment.I have always believed that the man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without. In an age of extravagance and waste, I wish I could show to the world how few the real wants of humanity are.To regret ones errors to the point of not repeating them is true repentance. There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. Unit15 Life Is Too Short to Be Little人生苦短休计较Orison Swett MardenWe men are imperfect beings, so conflicts among us are unavoidable. Inevitably, we sometimes feel injured, insulted, or slighted. Perhaps we put our faith in another, and were disappointed; perhaps we felt we deserved ones gratitude, and were denied; perhaps we wished to join our efforts to those of a group, and were rejected. Such experiences are painful indeed, but is it not foolish to let them occupy our thoughts and