经典励志英文美文摘抄
你只有换着法子地激励自己,直到它变成你血液的一部分。你只有不停跌倒,才能学会怎样用自己的力量站在大地上。下面小编整理了励志英文美文,希望大家喜欢!
励志英文美文摘抄
You Have to Water the Plant你得浇灌理解之花
by Leland Stowe
利兰•斯托
For the things I believe in, I must give a reporter’s answer. Like everyone else, it’s out of my own experience.
身为记者,我必须从职业的角度来说说何谓信仰。跟其他人一样,我也会从自身的经历谈起。
For twenty-four years I’ve been up to my neck in the world’s troubles; meeting people in dozens of foreign countries; watching other nations drift into war—and America too. It’s convinced me that one of the most important things in life, for every one of us, is understanding—trying to see the other fellow’s point of view. I’ve often thought: If I could really put myself in the other person’s shoes, see things the way he sees them, feel what he feels, how much more tolerant and fair I’d be.
24年来,我始终在与世界上的各种麻烦打着交道……接触来自不同国家的人们……目睹其他国家(包括美国)陷入战乱。这让我坚信,对我们每个人而言,人生最重要的事情之一就是理解并努力去了解他人的想法。我常常想,如果我能够真正站在别人的角度来看他们所看,感他们所感,那我将会是多么的宽容公正。
I remember, back in the twenties, the bitter arguments between Europeans and Americans about reducing the war debts.
20年代,欧洲与美国之间关于缩减战争债务的那场激烈争议,我记忆犹新。
I had to explain what the Europeans felt, and why. I learned then that there’s almost always some right, and some wrong, on both sides.
当时,我不得不为欧洲方面的想法与原因予以解释。我明白当时双方都有对与错,但我们都没有站在对方的立场上考虑。
We didn’t think enough about ours. When lack of understanding becomes pronounced, it leads to hatred and war.
当理解的匮乏变得显而易见时,就导致了仇恨与战争。而这一点在我们的日常生活中也能体现出来。
But it’s like that in our daily life, too. If I talk disparagingly about any racial group, I promote hatred—dissension in our society. I haven’t thought how I would feel if I belonged to that group.
如果我以轻蔑的口吻谈论任何种族,就会增加我们社会上的仇恨与纷争。如果我属于那个种族,我会有怎样的想法,这一点我却不曾考虑过。
In Berlin I saw Hitler’s thugs beating up helpless Jews. Then, back home, sometimes I heard people say: “Well, it’s their affair.”
如果我以轻蔑的口吻谈论任何种族,就会增加我们社会上的仇恨与纷争。如果我属于那个种族,我会有怎样的想法,这一点我却不曾考虑过。
They forgot that freedom and fair play belong to all human beings—not to lucky Americans only. They forgot that people are people—of whatever creed, color, or nationality.
他们忘记了自由与公平的行事的权利属于全人类,而并非只属于幸运的美国人。他们忘记了无论信仰、肤色和国籍有何不同,人都是人。
I remember the poor Spanish and Greek peasants who shared their bread and cheese with me—all they had; the old Russian woman who made me take her bed, while she slept on the floor. So many simple people who couldn’t speak my language but spoke with their hearts.
我记得,贫穷的西班牙和希腊农民曾让我分享他们最后的面包和奶酪;年老的俄罗斯妇人把她的床让给了我,自己却睡在地板上。那么,多纯朴的人们,他们虽然与我在言语不通,但却是在用心与我沟通。
One of the happiest things in my life is this: My best friends are like a roster of the United Nations—Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans, North Americans—just people, from all over the world.
正如联合国的成员名单一样,我也可以列出我最好的朋友们——他们来自欧洲、亚洲、拉丁美洲、北美洲,来自世界各地。
The best part is discovering how much we have in common; the constant reminder that friendship has no national barriers, the knowledge that all kinds of people really can understand each other.
我最大的发现就是我们拥有很多共同之处——这一点常常提醒我:友谊没有国界,也让我认识到不同国界的人们真的可以互相了解。
We all have to live in this world, but we are all a mixture of good and bad. But I’ve found more of the good than the bad in most people—in every country.
我们都必须在这个世界上生活,而我们每个人都有优点与缺点。但我发现,无论哪个国家的人们都是优点多于缺点的。
I think you only have to look— Understanding is a flower blossoming. But you have to water the plant.
我想,只要用心去看,你也会发现的。理解就像盛开的花朵,你必须去浇灌它。
Then, when it blossoms, what a wonderful feeling! You feel that way when you make a new friend. I guess understanding really is charity and love.
当它绽放时,那是一种多么美妙的感觉啊。当你拥有新朋友时,你就会明白这种感觉了。
I know it gives a new meaning to our lives. When I die, I wish people might say: “He helped people to understand each other better.” Of course, I often fail. But just trying makes living seem worthwhile.
我认为,理解其实就是仁慈与爱心,它能为我们的生活带来崭新的意义。当我死去时,我希望人们可以说:“他曾为人们的相互理解做出了努力。”当然,我也常常会失败。但我的生活因这种努力似乎也充满了价值。
励志英文美文鉴赏
Growing in the Middle Ground在探索中成长
Anne Phipps
安妮.菲普斯
I believe that my beliefs are changing. Nothing is positive. Perhaps I’m in a stage of metamorphosis, which will one day have me emerging complete, sure of everything. Perhaps, I shall spend my life searching.
我坚信,自己的信仰一直在改变。没有什么事情是绝对的。或许,我还只是处在幼体的发育阶段,总有一天我会发育完全,就会对一切深信不疑;或许,我将用一生的时间去探索。
Until this winter, I believed in outward things, in beauty as I found it in nature and art. Beauty past—swift and sure—from the outside to the inside, bringing intense emotion. I felt a formless faith when I rode through summerwoods, when I heard the counterpoint of breaking waves, when I held a flower in my hand.
在这个冬天以前,我信仰外界的事物,信仰在自然与艺术中所发现的美。美丽总会稍纵即逝,从外到内,给人留下无尽的感伤。当我骑马穿过夏日的树林,当我聆听着浪花翻滚的韵律,当我手中握着一朵鲜花时,我感觉到一种无形的信念。
There was the same inspiration from art, here and there in flashes; in seeing for the first time the delicacy of a green jade vase, or the rich beauty of a rug; in hearing a passage of music played almost perfectly; in watching Markov dance Giselle; most of all, in reading.
同样的灵感也来源于艺术——它无处不在,转瞬即逝。当我初次看到一只精妙的白玉花瓶时,或者看到一块华丽的地毯,听到一段演奏得近乎完美的音乐,看到马尔科娃在《吉赛尔》中优美的舞姿时,都会有这种灵感。然而,最多的灵感却是来自于阅读。
Other people’s creations, their sensitivity to emotion, color, sound, their feeling for form, instructed me. The necessity for beauty, I found to be the highest good, the human soul’s greatest gift. But there were moments when I wasn’t sure. There was an emptiness inside, which beauty could not fill.
他人的思想,对情感、颜色、声音的敏锐,以及对形式的感知,都会给我带来启迪。我发现,对美的需求是人类最崇高的善举,是人类灵魂最伟大的天赋。但是,我想它并非一切。今年冬天,我开始了大学生活。我所面临的问题也有所改变。很多事实与那些“谁拉着谁徘徊在哪个墙边?”的问题已变得毫无意义。相反,一些永恒的问题出现在我的面前,比如,何为美?何为真?
This winter, I came to college. The questions put to me changed. Lists of facts—and who dragged whom how many times around the walls of what—lost importance. Instead, I was asked eternal question: what is beauty, what is truth, what is God? I talked about faith with other students. I read St. Augustine and Tolstoy. I wondered if I hadn’t been worshipping around the edges. Nature and art were the edges, and inner faith was the center. I discovered—really discovered—that I had a soul.
何为上帝?我与其他学生探讨信仰的问题,我阅读圣奥古斯丁与亚里士多德的著作。我想知道,自己是否一直徘徊在信仰的边缘。自然与艺术皆为边缘,心中的信仰才是核心所在。我真实地发现,自己拥有一个灵魂。
Just sitting in the sun one day, I realized the shattering meaning of St. Augustine’s statement that, “The sun and the moon, all the wonders of nature, are not God’s first works but second to spiritual works.”I had, up till then, perceived spiritual beauty only through the outward. It had come into me. Now I am groping towards an inner, spiritual consciousness that will be able to go out from me. I am lost in the middle ground. I’m learning.
一天,当我坐在阳光下时,我猛然明白了圣尼古斯丁的话的涵义:太阳与月亮,所有自然界的奇迹,皆非上帝的“初作”,而是精神上的二次创造。直到那一刻,通过外部的事物,我才认识到精神上的美,那种美已经走进我的心中。如今,我正在通往内在精神意识的道路上摸索前行,希望有一天能够将它们从我的内心唤醒。我迷失在探索之中,我在学习。
励志英文美文赏析
I Live Four Lives at a Time我的四种生活
by Alice Thompson
艾丽斯·汤普森
I live a life of four dimensions—a wife, a mother, a worker, an individual in society. Diversified roles, yes; but they are well knit by two major forces: an attempt to discover, understand, and accept other human beings; and a belief in my responsibility toward others. The first began in my childhood when my father and I acted out Shakespeare.
我在生活中有着四重身份——既为人妻,又为人母;既有自己的事业,又是社会的一分子。是的,角色不同,但配合得很好,因为它们都受两种主要力量的支配:一是努力观察、理解和接受他人,二是对他人尽职尽责。第一种努力早在孩童时代我和父亲一起“出演”莎剧时就开始了。
He refused to let me merely parrot Hamlet’s brooding soliloquy, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, or Cardinal Woolsey’s self-analysis. He made a fascinating game of helping me understand the motivations behind the poetic words.
无论是哈姆雷特深沉的独白、麦克白夫人的梦呓,还是伍思里主教的自我剖析,父亲都不让我机械地背诵,而是通过有趣的游戏帮我揣摩诗句中隐含的角色内心活动。
In college, a professor further sparked this passionate curiosity about the essence of others and, by his example, transmuted it into a deep concern, a sense of responsibility that sprang not from stern Calvinistic principles, but from an awareness of all I received—and must repay with gladness.
在大学时代,一位教授的言传身教进一步引发了我理解他人本质的热忱与好奇,从他身上,我学到了如何将这种热忱与好奇转化为对他人深切的关爱、对他人应负的责任。这种责任心绝非源自卡尔文教派严格的教义,而是源自对我所获得一切的欣然回报。
I believe this acceptance, this tenderness one has for others, is impossible without an acceptance of self. Just when or where I learned that the full quota of human weakness and strength was the common property of each of us, I don’t know. But somewhere in my late twenties, I grew able to admit my own drives—and, rid of the anguished necessity of re-costuming them, I was free to face them, and recognize that they were neither unique nor uncontrollable.
我相信人若不能接受自己,便不可能接受和善待他人。不知从何时何地开始,我意识到每个人都有优点和缺点。在我快满三十岁的时候,我学会了承认内心的冲动,而非痛苦地将其掩饰,我泰然自若地应付它们,因为它们乃人之共性,只需善于驾驭。
The rich and happy life I lead every day brings new witness to the validity of my own philosophy, for me. Certainly it works in marriage. Any real marriage is a constant understanding and acceptance, coupled with mutual responsibility for one another’s happiness. Each day I go out strengthened by the knowledge that I am loved and love.
我想我的人生哲学是正确的——我度过的充实而快乐的每一天便是明证。我的人生哲学也适用于婚姻生活,因为真正幸福的婚姻都建立在夫妻之间彼此不断理解和相互接受的基础之上,双方应尽职尽责,让对方幸福。每天我外出工作,知道我的爱得到了回报,便浑身有了力量。
In the mother-child relationship, those same two forces apply. Words are useless to describe my efforts to know my own children. But my great debt to them for their understanding of me is one I have often failed to repay. How can I overvalue a youngster with the thoughtfulness, the imagination to always phone when a late arrival might cause worry? To always know how to reassure. How can I repay the one who dashed into adulthood far too young but has carried all of its burden with a firm, joyous spirit?
这两种力量在母子关系之间也发挥了效用。我为了解孩子们所做出的努力远非文字所能形容,而孩子们对我的理解更让我无以为报。是怎样的想象力、心灵相通和体贴,让一个孩子在母亲迟迟未归时总是打电话确认她的行踪与安危?他用稚嫩的双肩快乐而坚定地担起成人的责任,我要怎样做才能报答这位早熟懂事的孩子?!
My job itself is a reaffirmation of that by which I live. Very early in my working life, I was a small cog in a big firm. Emerging from a tiny job, I found a strange frightening world. Superficially, everyone was friendly. But beneath the surface were raging suspicion, distrust; the hand ever ready to ward off—or deliver—the knife in the back. For years I thought I was in a world of monstrous people. Then I began to know the company’s president.
我的人生信条在工作中也得到了印证。从业之初,我只是一家大公司的无名小卒。我从低微的职位慢慢晋升,发现公司是个十分古怪而可怕的世界。每个人表面上和和气气,暗中却相互猜忌,人人自危,既怕自己背后射来暗箭,又想伺机捅人一刀。几年下来,我觉得公司里每个人都是魔鬼,后来才发现这一切都是总裁一手造成的。
What he had been I have no way of knowing. But at seventy, he was suspicious, distrusting, sure that no one was telling him the truth. He had developed a technique of pitting all of us against each other. Able to see the distortion he caused, I youthfully declared that if I every ran a business, it would be on the reverse principle.
他从前为人如何我无从得知,但年已七旬的他满腹狐疑,不相信任何人,觉得所有人都在欺骗他,便运用手段挑起员工之间的争斗。明白了他何以能使人心扭曲,年轻的我暗下决心,他年我若自行创业,一定运用完全相反的原则。
For the last two years, I have had that opportunity, and had the joy of watching people—widely different people, too—learn to understand each other, accept each other, feel mutually responsible.
两年前我终于有机会自立门户,有了观察人的工作。我看到各种不同的人如何学会相互理解和接受,对彼此尽责。
My trials and errors have really synthesized into one great belief, which is that I am not alone in my desire to reach my fellow man. I believe the human race is inherently cooperative and concerned about its brother.
我的尝试和成败得失熔铸成一个坚定的信念——绝非仅我一人试图理解与尊重他人。我相信合作与相互关爱正是人类的本性。