经典英语晨读美文English Essenc For Recitement

Rejoicing in Hope ,Patient in Tribulation By John Fitzgerald Kennedy We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom –symbolizing an end as well as a beginning –signifying renewal as well as change. We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution .Let the world go forth from this time and place ,to friend and foe alike ,that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans ,born in this century ,tempered by the war ,disciplined by a hard and bitter peace ,proud of our ancient heritage ,and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed ,and to which we are committed today at home and around the world . Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill ,that we shall pay any price ,bear any burden ,meet any hardship ,support any friend ,oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty .This much we pledge –much more . In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine ,will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded , each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty . The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe. Now the trumpet summons us again , not as a call to bear arms ,though arms we need; not as a battle ,though in battle we are ;but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out ,rejoicing in hope ,patient in tribulation ,a struggle against the common enemies of man :tyranny ,poverty ,disease and war itself . In the long history of the world ,only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger .I do not shrink from thisresponsibility–I welcome it .The energy ,the faith ,the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it –and the glow from that fire can truly light the world . And so, my fellow Americans :ask not what your country will do for you –ask what you can do for your country My fellow citizens of the world :ask not what America will do for you ,but what together we can do for the freedom of man. Finally ,whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world ,ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you .With a good conscience our only sure reward ,with history the final judge of our deeds ,let us go forth to lead the land we love ,asking His blessing and His help ,but knowing that here on earth God‘s work must truly be our own. The Two Roads By John Ruskin It was New Year‘s Night .An aged man was standing at a window .He raised his mournful eystowards the deep blue sky ,where the stars were floating like lilies on the surface of a clear calmlake.Then he cast them on the earth ,where few more hopelss people than himself now moved towards their certain goal—the tomb .He had already passed sixty of the stages leading to it ,and he had brought from his journey nothing but errors and remorse .Now his health was poor ,his mind vacant ,his heart sorrowful,and his old age short of comforts. The days of his youth appeared like dreams before him, and he recalled the serious moment when his father placed him at the entrance of the two roads—one leading to a peaceful ,sunny place ,covered with flowers ,fruits and resounding with soft ,sweet songs ;the other leading to a deep ,dark cave,which was endless ,where poison flowed instead of water and where devils and poisonous snakes hissed and crawled. He looked towards the sky and cried painfully ,‖ Oh youth ,return !Oh my father ,place me once more at the entrance to life ,and I‘ll choose the better way!‖ But both his father and the days of his youth had passed away. He saw the lights flowing away in the darkness.These were the days of his wasted life;he saw a star fall from the sky and disappear ,and this was the symbol of himself .Hisremorse,which was like a sharp arrow,stuck deeply into his heart.Then he remembered his friends in his childhood ,who entered on life together with him .But they had made their way to success and were now honoured and happy on the this New Year‘s night. The clock in the high church tower struck and the sound made him remember his parents ?s early love for him .They had taught him and prayed to God for his good .But he choose the wrong way ,With shame and grief he dared no longer look towards that heaven where his father live .His darkened eyes were full of tears ,and with a despairing effort,he burst out a cry:‖Come back,my early days! Come back!‖ And his youth did return,for all this was only a dream which he had on New Year‘s Night.He was still young though his faults were real ;he had not yet entered the deep ,dark cave ,and he was still free to walk on the road which leads to the peaceful and sunny land . Those who still linger on the entrance of life ,hesitating to choose the bright road ,remember that when years are passed and your feet stumble on the dark mountains ,you will cry bitterly ,but in vain:‖Oh youth ,return!Oh give me back my early days !‖ Eternity of Youth There is a feeling of Eternity in youth ,which makes us amend for everything .To be young is to be as one of the immortal Gods. One half of time indeed is flown –the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures ;for there is no line drawn ,and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We make the coming age our own—the vast ,the unbounded prospect lies before us . Just remember Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind ; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks ,red lips and supple kness; it is a matter of will. a quality of imagination ,a vigor of the emotions ; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy or girl of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years .We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin ,but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul .Worry ,fear ,self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being‘s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what ?s next and the joy of the game of living . In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wirelss station: so long as it receives messages of beauty ,hope ,cheer ,courage and power from men and from the infinite ,so long are you young. When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism,then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up to catch waves of optimism ,there is hope you may die young at 80. Developing self-confidence Confidence is a feeling –an inner fire and 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. Most people have more to work with than they realize. One noted physicist calls this unused excellencies, and finding and releasing this potential in ourselves is one of the major challenges of modern life. The great danger is not that we shall overreach our capacities but that we shall undervalue and under-employ them, thus blighting our great possibilities. The goal of life is not a problemless existence, which would be unbearably dull , but a way to handle problems creatively. That word ―problem‖ may sound a little prickly, but it only means a question put forth for solution ,and actually life consists of a series of problems –and solutions,each different from the last. Confidence is delight-delight in living, in being who you are, in what you do, in growing , in the endless and sometimes exasperating adventure of what it means to be human. The teacher who delights in teaching has no time for bogging down in a swamp of doubt that he or she is doing it ―right‖, and they are well aware that they become a better teacher tomorrow, but only by doing their best today and enjoying today. So ,too, the mother who delights in being a mother does not worry overmuch about whether she fits the rules. She is not the mother, after all, of something material, but of a living child. Confidence is not always winning, not always victory. It is that very quality in humanity which refuses to stay defeated. A kind of stubborn cheerfulness. Remember that there are two things you can do with mistakes: you can run away and you can grow. On beauty Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herselfbe your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech ? The aggrieved and injured say, ―Beauty is kind and gentle. Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.‖ And the passionate say, ―Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and sky above us .‖ The tired and the weary say,―Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit .Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.‖ But the restless say, ―We have heard her shouting among the mountains ,and with her cries came the sound of hoofs ,and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.‖ At night the watchmen of the city say, ―Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.‖ And at noon-time the toilers say, ―We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.‖ In winter say the snowbound ,―She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.‖ And in the summer heat the reapers say, ―We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.‖ All these things have you said of beauty ,yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs of unsatisfied ,and beauty is not a need but an ecstasy .It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth ,but rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted .It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, but rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears .It is not sap within the furrowed bark ,nor a winging attached to a claw ,but rather a garden for ever in bloom and flock of angels for ever in flight . Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. Perseverance Perseverance depends on three things –purpose ,will , enthusiasm. He who has a purpose is always concentrating his forces .By the will ,the hope and plan are prevented from evaporating into dreams ,and a little gain is all the time being added .Enthusiasm keeps the interest up ,and makes the obstacles seems small. The man who thinks to get on by mere smartness and by idling meets failure at last. Life is in a sense a battle .Perseverance is the master impulse of the firmest souls ,and holds the key to those treasure-houses of knowledge from which the world has drawn its wealth both of wisdom and of moral worth . Great men never wait for opportunities ; they make them .They seize upon whatever is at hand ,work out their problem ,and master the situation. The greatest thing a man can do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given to him .This is success ,and there is no other. One of the first lessons of life is to learn how to get victory out of defeat It takes courage and stamina, when mortified and embarrassed by humiliating disaster ,to seek in the wreck or ruins the elements of future conquest .Yet this measures the difference between those who succeed and those who fail . You cannot measure a man by his failures You must know what use he makes of them. A constant struggle , a ceaseless battle to bring success from hard surroundings ,is the price of all great achievements. The man who has not fought his way upward, and does not bear the scar of desperate conflict ,does not know the highest meaning of success. Companionship of Books By Samuel Smiles A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as by the company he keeps; for there is a companionship of books as well as of men; and one should always live in the best company, whether it be of books or of men. A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the same today that it always was, and it always was, and it will never change. It is the most patient and cheerful of companions. It does not turn its back upon us in times of adversity or distress. It always receives us with the same kindness; amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and consoling us in age. Men often discover their affinity to each other by the mutual love they have for a book just as two persons sometimes discover a friend by the admiration which both entertain for a third. The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author. They live in him together, and he, in them. A good book is often the best urn of a life enshrining the best that life could think out; for the world of a man‘s life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the best books are treasures of good words, the golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our constant companions and comforts. Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most lasting products of human efforts. Temples and statues decay, but books survive. Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their authors‘ minds, ages ago. What was then said and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed page. Books introduce us into the best society; they bring us into the presence of greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them, grieve with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in a measure actors with them in the scenes which they describe. The Pleasure of Reading All the wisdom of ages, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of books but we must know how to avail ourselves of this treasure and how to get the most from it. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books. I am most interested in people, in them and finding out about them. Some of the most remarkable people met existed only in a writer‘s imagination, then on the pages of his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I‘ve found in books new friends, new societies, new words. If I am interested in people, others are interested not so much in whoas in how. Who in the books includes everybody from science fiction superman two hundred centuries in the future all the way back to the first figures in history.How covers everything from the ingenious explanations of Sherlock Holmes to the discoveries of science and ways of teaching manners to children. Reading is pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author‘s or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his. Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house, but books in a library are likes houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something, they are connected with each other and with other cities. The same ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different solutions according to different writings at different times. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own generations, like families. Wherever you start reading you connect yourself with one of the families of ideas, and in the long run, you not only find out about the world and the people in it ; you find out about yourself, too. Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be if you concentrate on books somebody tells you ―ought‖ to read, you probably won‘t have fun. But if you put down a book you don‘t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time—and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won‘t have suffered during the process. The Cardinal Virtue of Prose Prose of its very nature is longer than verse, and the virtues peculiar to it manifest themselves gradually. If the cardinal virtue of poetry is love, the cardinal virtue of prose is justice; and whereas love makes you act and speak on the spur of the moment, justice needs inquiry, patience, and a control even of the noblest passions. By justice here I do not mean justice only to particular people or ideas, but a habit of justice in all the processes of thought, a style tranquillized and a form mouldedby that habit. The master of prose is not cold, but he will not let any word or image inflame him with a heat irrelevant to his purpose. Unhasting, unresting, he pursue it, subduing all the riches of his mind to it, rejecting all beauties that are not germane to it; making his own beauty out of the very accomplishment of it, out of the whole work and its proportions, so that you must read to the end before you know that it is beautiful. But he has his reward, for he is trusted and convinces, as those who are at the mercy of their own eloquence do not; and he gives a pleasure all the greater for being hardly noticed. In the best prose, whether narrative of argument, we are so led on as we read, that we do not stop to applaud the writer, nor do we stop to question him. Learning—A lifelong Career As food is to the body, so is learning to the mind. Our bodies grow and muscles develop with the intake of adequate nutritious food. Likewise, we should keep learning day by day to maintain our keen mental power and expand our intellectual capacity. Constant learning supplies us with inexhaustible fuel for driving us to sharpen our power of reasoning, analysis and judgment. Learning incessantly is the surest way to keep pace with the times in the information age, and an infallible warrant of success in times of uncertainty. Once learning stops, vegetation sets in. It is a common fallacy to regard school as the only workshop for the acquisition of knowledge. One the contrary, learning should be a never-ending process, from the cradle to the grave. With the world ever changing so fast, to cease from learning for just a few days will make a person lag behind. What‘s worse, the animalistic instinct dormant deep in our sub-consciousness will come to life, weakening our will to pursue our noble ideal, sapping our determination to sweep away obstacles to our success and strangling our desire for refinement of character. Lack of learning will inevitably lead to stagnation. Therefore, to stay mentally young, we have to take learning as a lifelong career. Appetite One of the major pleasures in life is appetite, and one of our duties should be to preserve it. Appetite is the keenness of living; it is one of the senses that tells you that you are still curious to exist, that you still have an edge on your longings and want to bite into the world and taste its multitudinousflavors and juices By appetite, of course, I don‘t mean just the lust for food, but any condition of unsatisfied desire, any burning in the blood that proves you want more than you‘ve got, and that you have n‘t yet used up your life. Wilde said he felt sorry for those who never got their heart‘s desire, but sorrier for those who did. Appetite, to me, is that state of wanting, which keeps one‘s expectations alive. In wanting a peach or a whisky, or a particular texture or sound, or to be with a particular friend. For in this condition, of course, I know that the object of desire is always at its flawlessly perfect. Which is why I would carry the preservation of appetite to the extent of deliberate fasting, simply because I think that appetite is too good to lose, too precious to be bludgeoned into insensibility by satiation and over-doing it. Fasting is an act of homage to the majesty of appetite. So I think we should arrange to give up our pleasures regularly—our food, our friends, our lovers—in order to preserve their intensity, and the moment of coming back to them. For this is the moment that renews and refreshes both oneself and the thing one loves. Sailors and travellers enjoyed this once, and so didhunters , I suppose. Part of the weariness of modern life may be that we live too much on top of each other, and are entertained and fed too regularly. Too much of anything—too much music, entertainment, happy snacks, or time spent with one‘s friends—creates a kind of impotence of living by which one can no longer hear, or taste, or see, or love, or remember. Life is short and precious, and appetite is one of its guardians, and loss of appetite is a sort of death. So if we are to enjoy this short life we should respect the divinity of appetite, and keep it eager and not too much blunted. The Three New Yorks There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man of woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this city that accounts for New York‘s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidarity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference. Each embrace New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. Cultivating Our Hearts The autumn, with its ripening fruits and waving harvest, is now with us. We see on every hand the results of the farmer‘s toil and forecast in the spring time. Then it was that he broke up the soil, sowed the seed, pruned his trees, and guarded the tender plants. Now we see the ripening crops. The trees are bending with golden fruit, and abundance rewards the farmer‘s toil. But suppose in spring the farmer had left the soil unturned, the seed unsown, the trees untrimmed, and everything neglected, what would now be the result? We should see nothing but barren fields, overrun with weeds and briers; and the farmer would feel that a winter of want and distress was before him. And let us remember that the autumn of life will come on apace; and that what we now sow, we shall then reap. If we would reap an abundant harvest, and gather precious fruit, and secure an autumn of plenty and prosperity, we must now, in the spring time of life, be diligent and careful in cultivation of our hearts. We must form only those habits which will produce good fruits. Our acts must be noble, our thoughts and our words must be pure, and our feelings must be kind. As we now sow, we shall then reap. If we ―sow to the wind, we shall reap the whirlwind‖. Two Truths to live by The 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.‖ 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 it was and then suddenly realize that it is no more. 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. A recent experience retaught 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. 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. 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 preoccupiedwith 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 too busy for the wonder and the awe of life. Be reverent before each dawning day. Embrace hour. Seize each golden minute. 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.