英语名篇名段背诵精华(第21-30篇).doc

英语名篇名段背诵精华21 The English Character 英国人的性格
以下这段文字选自哥尔德史密斯的《世界公民》一书中有关英国社会的论述。关于英国人的性格，我们现在依然可以从中窥见一二。
The English seem as silent as the Japanese, yet vainer than the inhabitants of Siam. Upon my arrival I attributed that reserve to modesty, which, I now find, has its origin in pride. Condescend to address them first, and you are sure of their acquaintance; stoop to flattery, and you conciliate their friendship and esteem. They bear hunger, cold, fatigue, and all the miseries of life without shrinking, danger only calls forth their fortitude; they even exult in calamity, but contempt is what they cannot bear. An Englishman fears contempt more than death; he often flies to death as a refuge from its pressure, and dies when he fancies the world has creased to esteem him.
Except from Letters of a Citizen of the World by Oliver Goldsmith
Ø 注释
vain [vein]: too proud of one’s ability or achievements 自负的
fortitude [´fɔ:titju:d]: strength of mind that allows one to endure pain or adversity with courage 坚韧，刚毅
exult[ig´zʌlt]: to rejoice greatly; be jubilant or triumphant 狂喜，喜气洋洋或得意洋洋
contempt [kən´tempt]: disgrace, scorn 轻蔑，鄙视
Ø 作者简介
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) was a great man. Despite the disintegration of his personality, his excessive drunkenness and incurable extravagance, he was a man of rare talents that bordered on genius, one of the first natural writers in the English language. This reputation is based on, and justified by, some half a dozen books, essays, plays, poems, and one novel, The Vicar of Wakefield. And An History of the Earth and Animated Nature has been described as everything from “hackwork” to his “most substantial literary legacy”.奥利弗.哥尔德史密斯，是18世纪著名的英国剧作家。出生于爱尔兰，1756年定居伦敦，并展开其创作事业。不论是诗歌、小说、文章还是剧本，他的写作风格均以嬉笑怒骂的形式，借以讽刺时弊。
英国人似乎和日本人一样沉默寡言，却比泰国人更自负一点。我刚到伦敦时，把这种矜持归结为谦虚，现在我发现其源头是自尊心。要是你主动先和他们客套寒暄，你就会成为他们的熟人；要是你停下来对他们赞美一番，你就会成为赢得他们的友谊与尊重。他们忍受饥饿、寒冷、劳累，面对人生所有的苦难从不退缩；苦难只会让他们更加坚忍不拔；即使身处逆境，他们仍然能欣然面对；但决不能忍受遭轻视，对一个英国人来说，这比死更难受。他常常因承受不了遭人鄙视的压力而赴死以求解脱。当他人物世人不再尊重自己时就会毅然弃世。
英语名篇名段背诵精华22 The Use of History 历史的用处
《历史的用处》(The Use of History, 1946)一书，倾注了罗斯对历史的热情，书中体现了他多年的教学心得。
There are two ways of thinking of history. There is, first, history regarded as a way of looking at other things, really the temporal aspect of anything, from the universe to this nib with which I am writing. Everything has its history. There is the history of the universe, if only we knew it－and we know something of it, if we do not know much. Nor is the contrast so great, when you come to think of it, between the universe and this pen-nib. A mere pen-nib has quite a considerable history. There is, to begin with, what has been written with it, and that might be something quite important. After all it was probably only one quill-pen or a couple that wrote Hamlet. Whatever has been written with the pen-nib is part of its history. In addition to that there is the history of its manufacture: this particular nib is a 'Relief' nib, No. 314, made by R. Esterbrook and Co. in England, who supply the Midland Bank with pen-nibs, from whom I got it—a gift, I may say. But behind this nib there is the whole process of manufacture.... In fact a pen nib implies of universe, and the history of it implies its history. We may regard this way of looking at it—history as the time-aspect of all things: a pen-nib, the universe, the fiddled before me as I write, as a relative conception of history. There is, secondly, what we might call a substantive conception of history, what we usually mean by it, history proper as a subject of study in itself.
Excerpt from The Use of History by A.L.Rowse
Ø 注释
temporal [´tempərəl]: 当时的，暂时的，现世的
nib [nib]: 鹅管笔的尖端，钢笔尖
considerable [kən´sidərəbl]: worth of consideration; significant 重要的，值得考虑的；有重大意义的
Midland Bank: 米特兰银行
the fiddled: 不重要的事
substantive [´sʌbstəntiv]: of or relating to the essence or substance; essential 实质的，实在的
Ø 作者简介
A. L. Rowse (1903-1997) was a fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. The general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare, he achieved worldwide fame when he claimed the elusive Dark Lady of the sonnets was Emilia Lanier. He published more than ninety books of history, poems, biography, and criticism, including The Expansion of Elizabethan England. 罗斯是当代英国首屈一指的文史学者，著作丰硕，纵横文学与史学两大领域。其史学作品有文学旨趣，而其文学著作又有史家见识，尤其擅长用传记来构筑断代史，为著名的伊丽莎白王朝学者，他的英国伊丽莎白社会历史三部曲（1950-1971）著作更是有口皆碑，他也写了好几部丘吉尔家族传，所以他的史学情怀可谓贯通古今。
历史的思考方式有两种。其一，历史作为审视其他事物的一种方式，其实仅为所有事物暂时的面貌，从整个宇宙到正在书写的笔尖。每一样事物都有它的历史。宇宙也有它的历史，要是我们知道的话—虽然我们所知有限，总算知道一些；仔细想一下，宇宙和这笔尖，其间的差异也不是那么大。但即使仅是这笔尖也有一段历史。首先，透过它便有写出来的东西，而这些可能相当重要。毕竟莎士比亚戏剧《哈姆雷特》也只靠一两支鹅毛笔便完成了。通过笔尖所写出来的变成了它自身的历史。此外，还有制造过程的历史：我这支笔尖其实是英国艾斯塔布禄克(Esterbrook)厂牌314号凸版型产品，专门供应米特兰银行用品，我是从那儿取得的—或许应该说是银行的赠品。在这笔尖的背后有一连串的制造过程……。故此，这笔尖蕴含了一个宇宙，而它的历史也蕴含了它自身的历史。我们可以把这种审视的方式看作—历史就是所有事物的设计面貌：一支笔尖、宇宙、眼前我写作的领域…...作为历史的相对观念。其二，则为我们称作实质观念的历史，就是我们通常所说的，历史本身作为一个研究科目。
英语名篇名段背诵精华23 The Study of Words学习词汇的重要性
“你老板的词汇量比你的词汇量大。这是他为什么会成为你老板的一个重要原因。”作者认为每天花15分钟时间记单词的人，才会有丰富得体的表达能力，因此词汇能让你卓越不凡！
That if your vocabulary is limited your chances of success are limited.
That one of the easiest and quickest ways to get ahead is by consciously building up your knowledge of words.
That the vocabulary of the average person almost stops growing by the middle twenties. And that from then on it is necessary to have an intelligent plan if progress is to be made. No haphazard hit-or-miss methods will do.
...
The study of words is not merely something that has to do with literature. Words are your tools of thought. You can't even think at all without them. Try it. If you are planning to go down town this afternoon you will find that you are saying to yourself: "I think I will go down town this afternoon." You can't make such a simple decision as this without using words.
Without words you could make no decisions and from no judgments whatsoever. A pianist may have the most beautiful tunes in his head, but if he had only five keys on his piano he would never get more than a fraction of these tunes out.
Your words are your keys for your thoughts. And the more words you have at your command the deeper, clearer and more accurate will be your thinking.
A command of English will not only improve the processes of your mind. It will give you assurance; build your self-confidence; lend color to your personality; increase your popularity. Your words are your personality. Your vocabulary is you. And your words are all that we, your friends, have to know and judge you by. You have no other medium for telling us your thoughts--for convincing us, persuading us, giving us orders.
Except from Give us 15 Minutes a Day by Wilfred Funk & Norman Lewis
Ø 注释
literature [´litəritʃə]: 文学（作品），文艺，著作，文献
convince [kən´vins]: to bring by the use of argument or evidence to firm belief or a course of action 使确信，使信服
Ø 作者简介
Wilfred Funk威尔弗雷德.芬克，词典编辑家、出版家、作家；Norman Lewis诺曼.刘易斯，纽约州立大学的英语指导教师，1942年合作发表《三十天获取更有力的词汇量》(Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary)一书。该书是美国出版史上最为畅销的“自学手册”之一。
如果你的词汇量不大，你成功的机会也就不多。
最简洁而又最迅速的改进方法之一就是有意识地扩大你的词汇知识。
普通人的词汇量到了二十五六岁就几乎停止增长了。从那以后要想继续增加词汇量就必须有一个精心设计的计划。随意安排的、漫无目的的计划是不起作用的。
词汇学习并非只是某种与文学有关的事情。词汇是思维的工具。没有了词汇你甚至根本无法思维。你可以试一试。如果你打算今天下午进城，你会发现你在对自己说：“我想今天下午我要进趟城。”不借助词的话，你连这样一个简单的决定也作不了。
没有词汇你什么决定也作不了，什么判断也作不成。一位钢琴家的脑中可能想到了一首美妙的曲子，但是如果他的钢琴上只有五个音键的话，他永远也只能演奏出这首曲子的一些破碎的片段。
你的词汇是你思维的关键。你所掌握的词汇越多，你的思想就越深邃、越清晰、越准确。
掌握英语不仅可以改进你的思维方式，它还给你信心，令你自信，带给你鲜明的个性，使你更受欢迎。你的用词反映了你的个性。所谓词如其人。
作为你的朋友，我们大家都是从你的言辞中来了解你和评价你的。除此以外，你无法用别的什么交际手段来告诉我们你的想法—无法使我们信服，无法劝服我们，无法给我们下达命令。
英语名篇名段背诵精华24 Did You Deal With Fortune Fairly 你对命运公平吗
你是否感叹过命运对你不公？你是否从未想过—站在命运的立场上—问问自己：你对命运公平吗？
Most people complain of fortune, few of nature; and the kinder they think the latter has been to them, the more they murmur at what they call the injustice of the former.
Why have not I the riches, the rank, the power, of such and such, is the common expostulation with fortune; but why have not I the merit, the talents, the wit, or the beauty, of such and such others, is a reproach rarely or never made to nature.
The truth is, that nature, seldom profuse, and seldom niggardly, has distributed her gifts more equally than she is generally supposed to have done. Education and situation make the great difference. Culture improves, and occasions elicit, natural talents. I make no doubt but that there are potentially, if I may use that pedantic word, many Bacons, Lockes, Newtons, Caesars, Cromwells, and Mariboroughs at the ploughtail, behind counters, and, perhaps, even among the nobility; but the soil must be cultivated, and the season favourable, for the fruit to have all its spirit and flavour.
If sometimes our common parent has been a little partial, and not kept the scales quite even; if one preponderates too much, we throw into the lighter a due counterpoise of vanity, which never fails to set all right. Hence it happens, that hardly any one man would, without reverse, and in every particular, change with any other.
Though all are thus satisfied with the dispensations of nature, how few listen to her voice! How to follow her as a guide! In vain she points out to us the plain and direct way to truth, vanity, fancy, affection, and fashion assume her shape, and wind us through fairy-ground to folly and error.
Except from Upon Affectation by Lord Chesterfield
Ø 注释
niggardly [´nigədli]: grudging and petty in giving or spending 吝啬的，小气的
pedantic [pi´dæntik]: characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules 迂腐的，学究式的
preponderate [pri´pɔndəreit]: to be greater than something else, as in power, force, quantity, or importance 占优势的，超过，胜过
counterpoise [´kauntəpɔiz]: 平均，平衡
dispensation [¸dispen´seiʃən]: the act of dispensing 分配
Ø 作者简介
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773), English statesman and author. A noted wit and orator, his long public career, begun in 1715, included an ambassadorship to The Hague (1728-1732), a seat in Parliament, and a successful tenure as lord lieutenant of Ireland (1745-1746). His literary fame rests upon his letters to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope (first pub. 1774), designed for the education of a young man, and upon his letters to his godson. 切斯特菲尔德勋爵，英国著名政治家、外交家及文学家。他曾就读于剑桥大学，并游学欧洲大陆，1726年继承爵位，1728年出使荷兰，曾任爱尔兰总督及国务大臣等职位。并与他同时代的文学家波普、艾略特、爱迪生、斯威夫特等国王甚密。切斯特菲尔德勋爵留给世人最宝贵的财富，是他集几十年的心血，写个儿子菲利普.斯坦霍普及教子的信。在他的谆谆教诲下，其子也成为一名杰出的外交家。
很多人抱怨命运，却很少有人抱怨自然；人们越是认为自然对他们仁爱有加，便越是嘀咕命运对他们的所谓不公。
人们常常对命运发出诘难：我为何没有财富、地位、权力以及诸如此类的东西；但人们却很少或从不这样责怪过自然：我为何没有长处、天赋、机智或美丽以及诸如此类的东西。
事实是，自然总是将天赋公平地分配给人们，比人们通常认为的还要不偏不倚，很少过分地慷慨，也很少吝啬。人与人之间的巨大差异是由于教育和环境使然。文化修养改良了天赋，机遇环境诱发了天赋。如果允许我用“潜在的”这个学究味浓重的词的话，我们并不怀疑在农田耕作，在柜台后营业，甚至在豪门贵族中间有很多潜在的培根们、洛克们、牛顿们、凯撒们、克伦威尔们和马尔伯勒们；但是要使果实具有它全部的品质和风味，还必须有耕耘过的泥土，必须有适宜的季节。
倘若大自然有时候有那么一点偏心，没有将天平摆正；倘若有一头过重，我们就会在轻的一头投上一枚大小适当的虚荣的砝码，它每次都会将天平重新调平，从不出差错。因此就出现了这种情况：几乎没有人会毫无保留地和另一个人里里外外全部对换一下。
虽然对于自然的分配，人人都感到满意；然而肯听听她的忠告的人却是如此之少!能将她当作向导而跟随其后的人又是如此之少!她徒然地为我们指出一条通向真理的笔直的坦途；而虚荣、幻想、矫情、时髦却俨然以她的面貌出现，暗中将我们引向虚幻的歧途，走向愚笨和谬误。
英语名篇名段背诵精华25 The Lesson of a Tree 一棵树的启示
一棵树默默无闻地生存奉献,而人们却能从中获取丰富的人生哲理......
I should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to illustrate it. Here is one of my favorites now before me, a fine yellow poplar, quite straight, perhaps 90 feet high, and four thick at the butt. How strong, vital, enduring! How dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough and equable serenity all weathers, this gusty-temper’d little whiffet, man that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don’t, they do as well as most speaking, writing, poetry, sermons—or rather they do a great deal better. I should say indeed that those old dryad-reminiscences are quite as true as any, and profounder than most reminiscences we get. (“Cut this out,” as the quack mediciners say, and keep by you.) Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think.
One lesson from affiliating a tree—perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker-on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he likes or dislikes. What worse—what more general malady pervades each and all of us, our literature, education, attitude toward each other, (even toward ourselves,) than a morbid trouble about seems, (generally temporarily seems too,) and no trouble at all, or hardly any, about the sane, slow-growing, perennial, real parts of character, books, friendship, marriage—humanity’s invisible foundations and hold-together?
by Walter Whitman
Ø 注释
imperturbability [´impə(:)¸tə:bə´biliti]: 沉着冷静，泰然自若
the human trait of mere seeming: 人生的浮华表象
gusty-tempered little whiffed: 无用的小东西
scoff [skɔf]: to mock at or treat with derision 讽刺，嘲笑
malady [´mælədi]: a disease, a disorder, or an ailment 疾病
pervade [pə(:)´veid]: to be present throughout; permeate 充斥于，弥漫
perennial [pə´renjəl]: active through the year; enduring 终年的；持久的
Ø 作者简介
Walter Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets, Walt Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man. His Leaves of Grass, unconventional in both content and technique, is probably the most influential volume of poems in the history of American literature. 瓦尔特.惠特曼，19世纪美国最伟大的诗人之一。他费时37年，历经九次改版，才成就《草叶集》这本不朽诗集。他的写作风格清新质朴，其诗文不拘于格律，思想自由奔放，鼓舞人心，又能从变化无常的世事中，直指生命的真谛。作品不但是美国文学的瑰宝，同时也受到全世界读者的喜爱。
我不会列举最直耸云天或者最绚烂夺目的树来说明这个问题。现在我面前的是一颗我最爱的树，一颗茂盛的黄白杨，树干笔直，可能有九十英尺高，最粗的地方有四英尺宽。多么强壮，多么生机勃勃，多么坚忍不拔！多么口若悬河，而又默默无闻！这是沉着冷静、存在即真的表现，与人仅仅注重外表的性格恰恰相反。一棵树情感丰富，艺术感唾手可得，英雄气十足；天真无知，无心害人，而又冷酷无情。一棵树具备这些气质，却从不言语。树以坚强和一如既往的平静指责所有雨雪阴晴天气，大风来袭也只是轻轻摇曳，只要有一丝雨水或者一片雪花，人们就会跑进室内。科学（或者伪科学）嘲笑人们回忆森林女神和树神，嘲笑树间的轻语。但是，如果他们不介意，他们同样可以讲演，可以写作，可以吟诗，可以布道—或者他们可以做得更好。我应该说这些古老的回忆的确千真万确，比我们所作的大多数追忆更加深刻。（“把树切断”，庸医说这话的时候，你把树据为己有。）坐在小树林或者森林中，与这些默默无语的朋友相伴，回忆往事，陷入沉思。
追溯一棵树的根源得到的启示—也许从土地、岩石、动物身上获得的最伟大的道德启示同样是内在属性，无论旁观者（评论家）如何猜想或者评论，无论他喜欢抑或厌恶，都坚守自己的初衷。更糟糕的是—我们之间常常出现的流行疾病，我们的文学、教育、待人态度（甚至待己态度）之间常常出现的问题好疾病一样看起来不会造成困难，或者根本就没有困难，只是健全的、慢慢生长的、终年存在的人性本质，书籍、友情、婚姻的本质—人类无形的根基，紧紧地连接在一起？
英语名篇名段背诵精华26 The joys of writing 写作的快乐
写作是一种快乐，但并不是每一个人都能享受这种快乐。丘吉尔把写作当作一种快乐，当作对生活幸福的消化。把自己的心捧到纸上，去寻找和呼唤遥远的共鸣。以一张素纸遮起人所有的羞怯，痛快淋漓地倾诉自己。
The fortunate people in the world—the only really fortunate people in the world, in my mind, -- are those whose work is also their pleasure. The class is not a large one, not nearly so large as it is often represented to be; and authors are perhaps one of the most important elements in its composition. They enjoy in this respect at least a real harmony of life. To my mind, to be able to make your work your pleasure is the one class distinction in