美文欣赏之 赖大师的精选

chicagochenUID: 116575

第一弹：以书为友
                             A Great Friend
                                Anonymous

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”.

第二弹：励志经典                                             
                                               The  Joy  of  Labor
                                                     Anonymous

   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 but 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

第三弹  不要说晚
                     We’re Just Beginning

                                 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 don’t 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 out 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。

chicagochenUID: 116575

第四弹  父辈箴言                                      
                             Advice to a Young Man

                                            Rohert Jones Burdette

    Remember, my son, you have to work. Whether you handle a pick
or a pen, a wheel-barrow of a set of books. If you look around, you
will wee the men who are the most able to live the rest of their days
without work are the men who work the hardest. Don’t 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 slumber; 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.


第五弹   快乐相伴

                                       The Happy Door
                                         Mildred Cram

   Happiness is like a pebble dropped into a pool to set in motion
an Ever-widening circle of ripples. Ad 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 infectious 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 don’t 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 wide 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.

第六弹  友情相伴


                                         Friendship

                                 Oriaon Swett Marden

    No 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 more---to be happy and successful---than
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 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.

chicagochenUID: 116575

第七弹    快乐钥匙

A key to happiness

    To help others, you don’t 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 your 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,
produce 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 the joy 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.
第八弹  书香怡神

Companionship of books

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 man’s 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 us 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,
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.


第九弹]爱美爱美

The love of beauty 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 in-variable sign of goodness of heart . In proportion to the
degree in which it is felt will probably be the 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 sun-all overflow with beauty. This beauty is so precious, and so congenial
to our tenderest and noblest feelings, 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 our sources of happiness—it 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.

第十弹   为他人活

第十弹：为他人活
                         For the sake of other men

Strange is out situation here upon earth. Each of us comes foe a short visit,
not knowing why,yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.

From the standpoint of daily life, how ever, there is one thing we do know:
that man is here foe the sake of other men----above 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 troubles by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too
heavily from the work of other men.

To ponder interminably over the reason for one’s 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.


第十一弹：行为决定命运
You are what you do

If the past has taught us anything, it is that every cause brings effect-every
action has a consequence. This thought, in my opinion, is the moral foundation
of the universe; it applis 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 man’s 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 of us all.

In the end, we are all the sum total of out action. 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 out own destiny, for inexorably we become
what we do. This, I believe, is the supreme logic and the law of life.

chicagochenUID: 116575

第十二弹：青春永在
Youth

Youth 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 believing 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 despair---these bow the head and
turn the growing spirit back o dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen there is in every human being’s heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement of the stars and the star-like things,
the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for
what-next and the joy of the game of living.

You are ay young ad 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.

第十三弹：相信别人


Have faith in others


Belief is a happier state of mind than doubt and suspicion. By this I live, for if I don’t 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 behind 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, it’s no reason to walk thereafter with suspicion as a companion.

None knows another’s 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 another’s belief in them.

So, I would rather be disappointed than afraid of disappointment.


[待续 摘自旺旺英语]