北外英语专业考研真题(2)

　　CGap Filling (14 points).

　　Please choose the best sentence from the list after the passage to fill in each of the gaps in the text. There are more sentences than gaps.

　　Truths to live by

　　The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. (18)____________________. The rabbis of old put it this way: "A man comes into this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open."

　　(19)_______________. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love to love when it was tendered.

　　(20)_______________. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.

　　One morning, I had to have some additional tests. The required machines were located in a building at the opposite end of the hospital, so I had to be wheeled across the courtyard.

　　As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sun. (21) ______________.

　　I looked to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with their eyes fixed on the ground. Then I remembered how often I, too, had been indifferent to the grandeur of each day, too preoccupied with petty and sometimes even mean concerns to respond to the splendor of it all.

　　The insight gleaned from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious but we are too heedless of them.

　　Here then is the first pole of life's paradoxical demands on us: Never be too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. (22) ____________. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.

　　(23) _____________. This is the second side of life's coin, the opposite pole of its paradox: we must accept our losses, and learn how to let go.

　　This is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are young and think that the world is ours to command, that whatever we desire with the full force of our passionate being can, may, will, be ours. (24)____________.

　　[A]Surely we ought to hold fast to life, for it is wondrous, and full of a beauty that breaks through every pore of God's own earth.

　　[B]But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this second truth dawns upon us.

　　[C]For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment.

　　[D]When life is treated with the proper attitude, regret will surely not be left behind.

　　[E]A recent experience re-taught me this truth.

　　[F]Hold fast to life ... but not so fast that you cannot let go.

　　[G] Be reverent before each dawning day.

　　[H]And yet how beautiful it was --- how warming, how sparkling, how brilliant!

　　II.Please read the following passage and translate the underlined parts into Chinese (40 points, 8 points each).

　　Developing self-confidence

　　(25)Confidence is a feeling — an inner fire and an outer radiance, a basic satisfaction with what one is plus a reaching out to become more. Confidence is not something a few people are born with and others are not, for it is an acquired characteristic.

　　Confidence is the personal possession of no one; the person who has it learns it—and goes on learning. The most gifted individual on earth has to construct confidence in his gifts from the basis of faith and experience, like anybody else. The tools will differ from one person to the next, but the essential task is the same. Confidence and pose are available to us all according to our abilities and needs—not somebody else's—provided we utilize our gifts and expand them.