【正文】 晨讀英文美文 100 篇 ? 文化百科 1 Book and Life Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages。 they picture for us the miracles and beauties of nature, help us in our difficulties, fort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of weariness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves. Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books. Macaulay had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his biography that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books. He says, “If any one would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces and gardens and fine dinners, and wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books, I would not be a king。 I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who didn?t love reading.” Precious and priceless are the blessings which the books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most solemn and charming regions. Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms when Spenser39。s shapes of unearthly beauty flock to meet us, where Milton39。s angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of Paradise. Science, art, literature, philosophy, — all that man has thought, all that man has done, — the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations, — all are garnered up for us in the world of books. 2 The Year of Wandering Between the preparation and the work, the apprenticeship and the actual dealing with a task or an art, there es, in the experience of many young men, a period of uncertainty and wandering which is often misunderstood and counted as time wasted, when it is, in fact, a period rich in full and free development. It is as natural for ardent 熱心的、熱情的 and courageous youth to wish to know what is in life, what it means, and what it holds for its children, as for a child to reach for and search the things that surround and attract it. Behind every real worker in the world is a real man, and a man has a right to know the conditions under which he must live, and the choices of knowledge, power, and activity which are offered him. In the education of many men and women, therefore, there es the year of wandering。 the experience of traveling from knowledge to knowledge and from occupation to occupation. The forces which go to the making of a powerful man can rarely be adjusted and blended without some disturbance of relations and conditions. This disturbance is sometimes injurious, 有害的 because it affects the moral foundations upon which character rests。 and for this reason the significance of the experience in its relation to development ought to be sympathetically studied. The birth of the imagination and of the passions, the perception of the richness of life, and the consciousness of the possession of the power to master and use that wealth, create a critical moment in the history of youth, — a moment richer in possibilities of all kinds than es at any later period. Agitation 焦慮的 and ferment 使激動 of soul are inevitable in that wonderful moment. There are times when agitation is as normal as is selfcontrol at other and less critical times. The year of wandering is not a manifestation 表明 of aimlessness, but of aspiration, and that in its ferment and uncertainty youth is often guided to and finally prepared for its task. 3 The Price of Perfection Gold may depreciate,使降值，跌價 stocks rise or fall,and business values change so as to leave the market in panic,but every man on the street or in the store knows that one value forever remains permanent, unvarying,and that is other asset may be swept away and success still achieved if this remain。every other aid may be at its best and failure only await him who lacks the wealth of is that of which reputation is but the echo 回聲 , often mistaken and is the last, the ultimate, value of is the trend of the whole being towards the best. It is the passion and power that holds one true despite all persuasion. It is the one thing worth having, because upon it all other values depend. This asset es not to a man by who is rich in character, whose success in many ways is built upon his resources in this way, does not just simply happen to be good, true, and is a price to character。it costs more than any other thing, for it is worth more than all other it never is inherited,but always acquired by processes often slow and toilsome勞累的 and at great you would be perfect you must pay the price of the passion of life is this perfection it never will be your of ideal goodness only waste the hours in which it might have been man ever finds character in his education of the heart is a thing even more definite than the education of the school of character has an infinite【 ?infinit 無限的 variety of courses and an unending does not mean that this prize of eternity無窮無盡 fallsonly to those who devote themselves wholly to selfculture,to the salvation超度、得救 of their own souls. The best lives have thought little of themselves,but they have lived for the ends of the soul, to help men to better living,to save them from the things that blight 雜亂、植物害蟲 and damn the soul. Like the Leader of men they have found the life unending by laying down their lives,paying the full price, selling all in order that right and truth and honour and purity,love and kindness and justice might remain to man. 4 Three Passions I Have Lived for Three passions, simple but overwhelmin