优秀的简单的英语美文
英语的美文是值得我们去欣赏的，需要的都可以看看，今天小编就给大家整理了英语美文欣赏，欢迎大家参考
生活的艺术 The Art of Living
he art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way:" A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is open."
生活的艺术是要懂得如何取舍。因为生活本身自相矛盾：它一面告诫我们珍惜它所赐予的诸多恩惠，一面又注定最终将其全部收回。古时犹太教的拉比对此这样诠释：“一个人初降人世时手紧握成拳，撒手人寰时却手掌张开。”
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. We know that this is so, but all too often we recognize this truth only in our backward glance when we remember what was and then suddenly realize that it is no more.
我们当然应该牢牢抓住生活，因为它奇妙无比、美不胜收，渗透了上帝的每一寸土地。我们明白这一点，但往往是在忆及往事、蓦然回首却发现好景不再时才有所感触。
We remember a beauty that faded, a love that waned. But we remember with far greater pain that we did not see that beauty when it flowered, that we failed to respond with love when it was tendered.
我们记得凋零的美，消褪的爱。但我们更痛楚地忆起，在美丽绽放时没有欣赏那份美丽，在情意绵绵时没有回应那份爱意。
A recent experience re-taught me this truth. I was hospitalized following a severe heart attack and had been in intensive care for several days. It was not a pleasant place.
最近的经历让我重新认识到这个真理。在严重心脏病发作后，我被送进医院，在重症室住了好几天。那可不是令人愉快的地方。
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 on a gurney.
一天早晨，我不得不再做些其它检查，所需的器械在医院对面尽头的一幢楼里，因此我必须被推着从院子经过。
As we emerged from our unit, the sunlight hit me. That's all there was to my experience. Just the light of the sun. And yet how beautiful it was -- how warming, how sparking, how brilliant! I looked to see whether anyone else relished the sun's golden glow, but everyone was hurrying to and fro, most with 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 from that experience is really as commonplace as was the experience itself: life's gifts are precious -- but we are too heedless of them.
检查完出来时，阳光照在我身上。那是我当时感受到的一切。和煦的阳光，多么美丽———多么温暖，多么耀眼，多么灿烂!我环顾四周，想看其他人是否也在欣赏这 金灿灿的阳光，但来来去去的每个人都行色匆匆，眼睛大都盯着地面。这时，我忆起我也经常因被琐碎、有时甚至毫无意义的事占据头脑而每天对这样壮观的景色熟 视无睹。就在那一刻，我突然意识到生活的馈赠是多么珍贵———而我们却忽视了它们。
Here then is the first pole of life' s paradoxical demands on us : Never too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace each hour. Seize each golden minute.
这就是生活自相矛盾要求我们的第一极：不要因生活过于忙碌而忽略了它的奇妙和庄严。在每个黎明到来之前心怀敬意。拥抱每一小时，抓住珍贵的每分钟。
Hold fast to life...but not so fast that you cannot let go. 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.
抓住生活，但不要抓得太紧，以致于无法放弃。这是生活硬币的另一面，也是其矛盾的另一极：我们必须接受失去，并且学会放弃。
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, nay, will, be ours. But then life moves along to confront us with realities, and slowly but surely this truth dawns upon us.
要学会这一课并非易事，尤其当我们年轻气盛时，自认为是世界的主宰，认为用充满激情的躯体全力追求的东西能够，而且———最终将会是我们的。但光阴荏苒，面对现实，我们才渐渐明白并非如此。
At every stage of life we sustain losses -- and grow in the process. We begin our independent lives only when we emerge from the womb and lose its protective shelter. We enter a progression of schools, then we leave our mothers and fathers and our childhood homes. We get married and have children and then have to let them go. We confront the death of our parents and our spouses. We face the gradual or not so gradual waning of our strength. And ultimately, as the parable of the open and closed hand suggests, we must confront the inevitability of our own demise, losing ourselves as it were, all that we were or dreamed to be.
在 人生的每个阶段我们都会蒙受损失———并在此过程中成长。我们只有脱离母体、失去庇护所时才开始独立生活。我们进入各级学校，然后离开父母。我们结婚生子，然后再放飞子女。我们面对父母和配偶的离世，我们逐渐或很快变得衰弱。最终，如同张开和握紧的手的寓言，我们必须面对不可避免的死亡，失去原来的自 我，失去我们原有的或梦想的一切。
你并不特别
In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point — and we're happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that's the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totempole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it's “So what does this get me?” As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.
虽然我们并未明说，但显而易见地，在达尔文的物竞天择理论中-我认为它源于我们对自身渺小的恐惧和对死亡的忧虑。最近我们美国人-这对我们造成很大的损害-对赞美的喜爱更胜于真正的成就;我们必须认真看待这一点。我们乐于向标准妥协，或忽略事实，如果我们认为这是最快或唯一的方式，让我们能得到某种放在壁炉上炫耀的东西;某种能让我们装腔作势、自吹自擂的东西;某种能让我们在社会图腾柱上爬到更佳位置的东西。我们不再在乎如何比赛、结果是赢是输;是否能藉此学习成长或乐在其中。现在我们在乎的是，「这能给我什么好处?」结果是，我们贬低了努力的价值。建立瓜地马拉医疗中心的目的更倾向于对鲍登学院的应用，而非危地马拉人的福祉。
It's an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune… one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School… where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.” I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You're it or you're not.
这是一种传染病，以它传染的程度来说，连历史悠久的韦斯利高中都无法幸免。全国37000所高中最好的之一-韦斯利高中。在这里，「良好」已算不上够好;B被视为新的C;中等程度的课程被称为大学先修课程。我希望你们注意到我刚刚所说的「最好的之一」;我说「最好的之一」，是因为这样我们才能对自己感觉良好;才能沉浸在这微不足道的差异中，无论这多么地含糊不清、无法验证;才能将自己视为菁英之一，无论菁英可能是谁;并享受在自我认定的竞争中自以为是的领先。但这句话并不合逻辑。以定义来说，最好的只有一个;是就是，不是就不是。
If you've learned anything in your years here I hope it's that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning. You've learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream… just an fyi) I also hope you've learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning. It's where you go from here that matters.
如果你在高中岁月里有学到任何东西，我希望是教育的本质-乐在学习，而不是物质上的优势。我也希望你们学习到，如Sophocles(古希腊悲剧作家)所说的，智能是快乐的首要元素;第二个是冰淇淋-仅供参考。我也希望你所学的足以使你体认到自己的不足，了解自己目前所知的是多么地少。因为今天只是一个开始，重要的是今后的学习。
As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don't bother with work you don't believe in any more than you would a spouse you're not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction. Be worthy of your advantages. And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements there are cessations, and you'll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.
当你们毕业后，准备大展鸿图之前，我建议你们，不管做任何事，都应基于热爱和相信它的重要性。别费心理会你根本不相信的事，就像你不会跟一位你并未疯狂爱上的伴侣结婚;也避免让自己在巴尔的摩金莺队的比赛中站错边。别志得意满;别被物质主义华而不实的光芒蒙蔽;别被自我满足麻痹;别愧对自己的优势。并阅读…养成阅读习惯;阅读跟原则和自重有关，把阅读当成生活中的精神食粮。培养及保持道德感，并展现道德品格;拥有远大梦想，并努力实现;进行独立思考;全心全意地爱你所爱的一切人事物。请一定要把握时间，及时行动，因为时间正一分一秒地流逝。
爱的礼物 A gift of love
"Can I see my baby?" the happy new mother asked.
“我可以看看我的宝宝吗?”初为人母的她开心地问道。
When the bundle was nestled in her arms and she moved the fold of cloth to look upon his tiny face, she gasped. The doctor turned quickly and looked out the tall hospital window. The baby had been born without ears.
当裹着的婴儿放到她臂弯里，她掀开裹着婴儿的布，在看到他的小脸时，她不禁倒吸了一口气。医生快速地转过身，透过医院的高层窗户向外看去。婴儿生下来就没有耳朵。
Time proved that the baby's hearing was perfect. It was only his appearance that was marred. When he rushed home from school one day and flung himself into his mother's arms, she sighed, knowing that his life was to be a succession of heartbreaks.
时间证明婴儿的听力毫无问题，只是有损他的相貌。一天，当他匆匆从学校跑回家，扑向母亲的怀抱时，她叹了口气，意识到他的生活注定会受到一连串的打击。
He blurted out the tragedy. "A boy, a big boy...called me a freak."
他脱口诉说遭到的不幸：“一个男孩，一个大个子男孩……他喊我怪胎。”
He grew up, handsome except for his misfortune. A favorite with his fellow students, he might have been class president, but for that. He developed a gift, a talent for literature and music.
他长大了，虽然不幸但还是长得挺帅。颇受同学的欢迎，要不是有缺陷，他很可能当了班长。他对文学和音乐很有天赋和潜质。
"But you might mingle with other young people," his mother reproved him, but felt a kindness in her heart.
“但你可能会和其他年轻人一样。”母亲责备地说，但从心底里觉得很欣慰。
The boy's father had a session with the family physician... "Could nothing be done?"
男孩的父亲与家庭医生商量……“难道真无法补救吗?”
"I believe I could graft on a pair of outer ears, if they could be procured," the doctor decided. SO the search began for a person who would make such a sacrifice for a young man.
“我认为可以移植一双外耳，如果能够找到的话。”医生做了决定，于是他们开始寻求一个愿意为这个年轻人做出牺牲的人。
Two years went by.Then, "You're going to the hospital, son. Mother and I have someone who will donate the ears you need. But it's a secret." said the father.
两年过去了。对儿子说，“孩子，你要住院了。我和你妈找到愿意为你捐献耳朵的人了。但要求保密。”
The operation was a brilliant success, and a new person emerged. His talents blossomed into genius, and school and college became a series of triumphs.
手术获得了巨大成功，一个新人诞生了。他的潜力发展成一个天才，在中学和大学都取得了一连串的成功。
Later he married and entered the diplomatic service. "but I must know," he asked his father, "Who gave me the ears? Who gave me so much? I could never do enough for him."
后来他结婚了，进入外交行业工作。一天，他问父亲：“是谁给我的耳朵?谁给了我那么多?我做多少都无法报答他/她。”[/cn
"I do not believe you could," said the father, "but the agreement was that you are not to know...not yet."
[cn]“我也这样认为，”父亲说，“但是协议上说你不能知道……还不到时候。”
The years kept their profound secret, but the day did come. One of the darkest days that ever pass through a son. He stood with his father over his mother's casket. Slowly, tenderly, the father stretched forth a hand and raised the thick, reddish brown hair to reveal taht the mother had no outer ears.
他们的秘密遵守了很多年，但这天终于来了，这也是儿子度过的最黑暗的日子。他和父亲站在母亲的棺材前，慢慢地，轻柔地，父亲向前伸出一只手，掀开母亲浓密的、红褐色的头发：母亲竟然没有耳朵!
"Mother said she was glad she never let her hair be cut," his father whispered gently, "and nobody ever thought mother less beautiful, did they?"
“你母亲说过她很高兴，她从不理发，”父亲轻柔地低声说，“但没人觉得母亲没以前美丽，是吧?”
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