励志短篇英语美文背诵精选
最成功的投资
The Soundest Investment of All
by C. Jared Ingersoll
I feel very presumptuous and uncomfortable about trying to explain out loud the things Ibelieve in. But I do think that all human problems are in some way related to each other, soperhaps if people compare their experiences they may discover something in common in huntingthe answers.
I am a very fortunate man for I lead a full and what is for me a happy life. I say this eventhough I happen to have had, in the course of it, a couple of severe personal blows.
My first wife collapsed and died one day while she and I were ice skating, after eighteen years ofa most happy existence together. My only son, a sergeant in the army combat engineers, waskilled in Italy in the last war. Nevertheless, these tragedies did not throw me completely and Ihave been able to fill my life anew with happiness.
I do not mean to sound calloused. Those blows hurt me deeply. I guess that two basicallyimportant things helped me most to recover. One is the fact that I have come to see life as agamble. The other is a belief in what some people call the hereafter. I try to live fully so thatwhen and if my luck changes there will be little room for regret or recrimination over time lost ormisspent. My belief in the hereafter is wrapped in the intangible but stubborn thoughts of alayman. Very likely I would get lost in trying to describe or defend, by cold logic, my belief inGod but nobody could argue me out of it.
I have come to believe that I owe life as much as it owes me, and I suppose that explains thisfine satisfaction I get out of endeavoring to do a job to the best of what ability I have, and outof helping somebody else.
As a kid I used to ride a rake in the hayfields. I got a tremendous kick out of trying to sweepevery field clean as a whistle. Here I made a surprising and happy discovery: that there couldbe actual enjoyment in the exercise of thoroughness and responsibility, and that duty didn’thave to be a drudge.
I don’t know exactly why, but I like to do things for other people. Not only familyresponsibilities, work on a hospital board, and various church organizations but also the mostinconsequential things that might hardly seem worth the time. My office happens to be onIndependence Square and now and then I have occasion to direct a tourist to the Liberty Bell orfill him in on a little of the history of Philadelphia. The tourist doesn’t seem to mind and it makesme feel good. I’m afraid I’m not very profound. I have tried to comprehend why somethingso simple and so sound as the Golden Rule is so often forgotten or held in disrepute. I canonly say—and I say this quite selfishly—that I have found it a good investment. It has paid me avery high return, undoubtedly more than I deserve.
C.贾里德.英格索尔
我想，若是大声解释我的信仰，不仅会给人一种自大的感觉，也会使我感到不安。但是我认为，从某种程度上来说，人类所有的问题都是息息相关的。因此，倘若人们比较一下他们的经历，也许就能在寻找答案的过程中发现某些共同之处。
我是一个幸运的人，因为我的生活充实而幸福。不管怎样，我依然会这么说，即使曾经的多次不幸给我带来了沉重的打击。我与第一个妻子共同度过了18年幸福的婚姻生活，然而在我们去滑冰的那天，她突然倒下，撒手人寰。我唯一的儿子是一名工兵军士，二战期间，在意大利阵亡。然而，我并没有被这些不幸彻底打倒，而是再次让我的生活充满幸福。
我并不是想让大家觉得我冷酷无情。这些不幸确实对我造成了很大的伤害。我想我之所以能够重新振作起来，其中有两个重要的原因：一是我认为生活其实就是一场赌博，二是我对人们所说的来世深信不疑。为了在晦运时，不至于因虚度时光而后悔或自责，我努力让自己充实地生活。作为一个普通信徒，无形而坚定的思想正是我信仰来世的来源。我信仰上帝，也许我难以用冷冰冰的逻辑来描述这个信仰或为它辩护，但谁也无法说服我放弃它。
我相信，我对生活付出多少，就会得到多少。因此，我认为，我最大的满足正是来源于尽自己最大的努力去做一份工作或是帮助别人。
孩提时，我常会在干草地上开耙草机。在将每片草地耙干净的过程中，我总会获得极大的成就感，并惊奇地发现：尽心而尽责地完成一件事会为你带来真正的快乐，而尽责也并不一定是做苦工。
我很喜欢为人服务。我不仅为家庭负责，在一家医院的理事会及各种教会组织中工作，我还会去做一些看似浪费时间的最无关紧要的'琐事。我的办公室正好在独立广场，因此我偶尔会为去独立钟的游客带路，一路上给他讲一些费城的历史。虽然游客并不在乎这些，但我却乐此不疲。我自己并非知识渊博之人。我常常想弄明白，像黄金定律那样简单而合理的箴言为何总被人们遗忘或不屑一顾。我只能说，也自私地说，我发现为人服务是一项最成功的投资。毫无疑问，它给予我的回报远远高于我的应得。
短篇励志英语美文阅读欣赏
生命在时间的土壤里(托马斯.曼)
Life grows in the soil of time
What I believe, what I value most, is transitoriness.
But is not transitoriness - the perishableness of life - something very sad? No! It is the verysoul of existence. It imparts value, dignity, interest to life. Transitoriness creates time - and"time is the essence." Potentially at least, time is the supreme, most useful gift.
Time is related to - yes, identical with - everything creative and active, every process towarda higher goal.
Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either.Timelessness - in the sense of time never ending, never beginning - is a stagnant nothing. It isabsolutely uninteresting.
Life is possessed by tremendous tenacity. Even so its presence remains conditional, and asit had a beginning, so it will have an end. I believe that life, just for this reason, is exceedinglyenhanced in value, in charm.
One of the most important characteristics distinguishing man from all other forms of nature ishis knowledge of transitoriness, of beginning and end, and therefore of the gift of time.
In man transitory life attains its peak of animation, of soul power, so to speak. This does notmean alone would have a soul. Soul quality pervades all beings. But man's soul is most awakein his knowledge of the interchangeability of the term "existence" and "transitoriness".
To man time is given like a piece of land, as it were, entrusted to him for faithful tilling; a spacein which to strive incessantly, achieve self-realization, more onward and upward. Yes, with theaid of time, man becomes capable of wresting the immortal from the mortal.
Deep down, I believe - and deem such belief natural to every human soul - that in the universityprime significance must be attributed to this earth of ours. Deep down I believe that creation ofthe universe out of nothingness and of life out of inorganic state ultimately aimed at thecreation of man. I believe that man is meant as a great experiment whose possible failure ofman's own guilt would be paramount to the failure of creation itself.
Whether this belief be true or not, man would be well advised if he behaved as though it were.
没有短暂，没有开始与结束、生与死，时间也就不复存在。永恒是毫无意义的停滞，它意味着时间永远没有结束，也永远没有开始，绝对令人乏味。
短暂是我的信仰，也是我认为最重要的东西。
然而短暂，如生命的消逝，不是非常哀伤的事情吗?不!它正是生命存在的精髓。它赋予了生命价值、尊严和情趣。短暂创造了时间——而“时间正是其本质”。至少，时间是至高的，是最有用的礼物。
时间与所有富有创造力和活力的事物，及每一个达到更高目标的进步息息相关——是的，它甚至等同于这一切。
没有短暂，没有开始与结束、生与死，时间也就不复存在。永恒是毫无意义的停滞，它意味着时间永远没有结束，也永远没有开始，绝对令人乏味。
生命顽强无比。即便如此，它的存在也依赖于一定的条件，正如它有始亦有终。也因如此，我坚信，生命的价值与魅力将会不断地增长。
人同自然界其他事物之间最重要的区别之一就是，人懂得短暂、始与终，所以也了解时间是一种恩赐。
可以这么说，在人身上，短暂的生命达到了其活力与精神力量的巅峰。这并不是说只有人拥有灵魂。万物皆有灵性。但是对于“存在”与“短暂”的可互换性，只有人的大脑才能最清楚地意识到。
对于人类来说，时间就如赐予的一片土地，等待他去辛勤耕种;是一个让他不断奋斗进取，实现自我价值，不断前进向上的空间。是的，在时间的帮助下，人可以从有限的生命中获得永恒。
在内心深处，我相信宇宙中最为重要的当属我们的地球，并认为这样的信念存在于每一个人的心中。从内心深处，我相信混沌中宇宙的创造，无机中生命的萌芽，最终都是为了创造人类。我相信人类本身便是一项伟大的实验，它可能会因人类自身的罪恶而失败，但这也成为创造本身最主要的失败。
无论这个信仰是否真实，人类如果能依此行事，将会获得更为有益的忠告。
励志优美英语短篇阅读
New challenges require new ways of thinking
面对新挑战，要有新思路
Part car, part jet fighter, part spaceship, Bloodhound SSC aims to be the first land vehicle to break the 1,000mph barrier. One of the key challenges has been to design the wheels. How do you create the fastest wheels in history, make them stable and reliable at supersonic speeds, and with limited resources?
部分汽车、部分喷气式飞机、部分宇宙飞船，猎犬号超级汽车的目标是做世界上第一辆时速突破1000英里的汽车。而这面临的一项关键挑战是车轮的设计。如果换做是你，你会如何在有限的资源下发明出超音速汽车上用的轮子呢?
After much deliberation, and devising ideas that pushed the boundaries of material technology, Mark Chapman, chief engineer of the Bloodhound project said the team decided to take a step back and change the way they were trying to solve problems. “There’s very little we’ve actually developed that’s new,” he says, “what’s unique is how we apply technologies.”
猎犬号项目的总工程师马克·查普曼思来想去，觉得材料还是不够好。最后他和他的团队决定退回一步、换个角度看有没有别的办法。“我们实际创新的东西并不多”，马克说：“我们的独特之处在于应用技术的方式别具一格。”
They adopted an approach called the design of experiments – a mathematical technique of problem solving through doing lots of little experiments and then looking at the statistics all glued together. “All of a sudden, where we’d been knocking our head against the wall for maybe two, three, four months, we came up with a wheel design that would hold together and was strong enough,” he says.
他们采用实验设计的方法做了很多的小实验，综合所得的数据再得出精确设计。“花了三四个月绞尽脑汁做尽各种实验之后，很突然地我们做出了一个大胆的设计：把各种可用的(飞机、飞船所用的)技术都融合在一辆车上，从而使它足够强大。”马克说。