優美的英語文章

　　閱讀經典美文可以豐富學生的知識,鞏固學習成果;可以提高學生的閱讀能力和寫作能力;可以學生的審美能力和陶冶情操。下面是小編帶來的，歡迎閱讀!

　　1

　　快樂為因，成功為果?

　　let’s look at happiness from a different perspective. most people see happiness as a response to good things happening; a natural assumption to make, considering that when good things happen, it makes us happy. but the evidence is piling up that happiness is also a cause of good things happening. and by ‘good thing’, i don’t mean that people smile at you more because you’re cheerful, or some other pleasant but ultimately feebly benefit. i mean a better career, more chance of finding love, better resistance to disease, and many other things.

　　how is happiness supposed to bring success?

　　happiness is a signal that things are going well. you’re safe, you have access to the resources you need, and you’re making progress towards your goals - life is good. when things are good, it makes little sense to put walls around you and carefully guard everything you have a hallmark of ‘negative’ emotions. it’s a better time to expand, take on new goals and challenges.

　　imagine you’re really rich. a multi-millionnaire if you like. someone comes to you with a proposal for an investment. it’ll cost you £10k, and it’s risky, but the return could be pretty good. do you do it? probably! £10k is small change to you, you wouldn’t even notice the loss. that’s an extreme example, but basically it’s a similar principle with happiness. it encourages a person to expand, because the mind thinks opportunity is knocking. therefore happy people should get more success, because their emotional state essentially makes trying to succeed more appealing.

　　now the researchers in this field aren’t saying that the direction of causality is only from happiness to success. this wouldn’t even logically follow. if you got some success, your resources and abundance would increase, which according to this theory is one of the reasons you get happy in the first place! so if it’s true that happiness contributes to success, it can only be true that success contributes to happiness as well. so you could get a kind of upward spiral though other things, like adaptation, complicate the matter - see this post for more details.

　　this series of posts is based on a huge analysis done in 2005 1, see the footnotes for more information on the researchers. they pulled together a huge amount of evidence together to see if this perspective on happiness holds up, and find that it does in three areas: work, love and relationships, and health. here we’ll look at work, but first let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about.

　　what do they mean by ‘happiness’?

　　the definition of happiness in this study was slightly different to the one normally used in studies life satisfaction or subjective well-being, see what is happiness?. the definition here, is the experience of frequent positive emotions, and less frequent though not completely absent negative emotions.

　　why this different definition? because in this framework, it’s positive emotion that leads us to pursue new goals and opportunities in the moment - rather than how pleased we are with life generally.

　　so technically they are saying that success comes from from a happy state, not a happy disposition, but, a person with a happy disposition will be in a happy state more of the time.

　　what is success?

　　what do you think success is? you might see success as lots of money and a family. a man in the mursi tribe of ethiopia might see success as living to the age of thirty and marrying a woman with a 10″ ceramic plate in her lip. so success means to do well relative to the goals valued by the society you’re in.

　　as this study was done in the us, the researchers decided to use work, love and health as the markers of success.

　　work

　　if you’re reading this from anywhere outside of a western culture, let me assure you, we love to work! well, most people complain about work, but they still get up at 7am every morning to do it. there’s very little i’d choose to get out of bed for at 7 in the morning, and yet i’ve woken up at that time and earlier, thousands of times, to go to work.

　　2

　　接受這世界，你會快樂

　　there is nothing either good or bad,but thinking makes it so.”---- - william shakespeare, “hamlet”

　　one of the greatest sources of unhappiness, in my experience, is the difficulty we have in accepting things as they are.

　　without judgment, without wishing for otherwise.

　　when we see something we don’t like, we wish it could be different — we cry out for something better. that may be human nature, or perhaps it’s something that’s ingrained in our culture.

　　the root of the unhappiness isn’t necessarily that we want things to be different, however: it’s that we decided we didn’t like it in the first place. we’ve judged it as bad, rather than saying, “it’s not bad or good, it just is.”

　　an example: in my recent post, a beautiful method to find peace of mind, quite a few commenters thought my outlook was negative, pessimistic, or fatalistic … because i said you should expect people to mess up, expect things to go differently than you planned, and that you should embrace that.

　　it’s too negative to expect things to go wrong, they said. however: it’s only negative if you see it as negative. if you judge it as bad.

　　instead, you could accept it as the way the world works — as the way things actually are. and try to understand why that is, and embrace it. as it is.

　　this can be applied to whatever you do: whether it be how other people act at work, how politics works and how depressing the news media can be. accept these things as they are, and try to understand why they’re that way.

　　it’ll save you a lot of grief, because you’ll no longer say, “oh, i wish things didn’t suck!”

　　does it mean you can never change things? not at all. but change things not because you can’t accept things as they are, but because you enjoy the process of change, of learning and growing.

　　can we make this world a better place? again, that’s assuming that it’s a bad place right now. but instead, you could say the world is just what it is — and that’s neither good nor bad. you can say that you’ll continue to try to do things to help others, to grow as a person, to make a difference in this world — not because you’re such a bad person now, or the world sucks, but because that’s the path you choose to take, because you enjoy that path.

　　as you catch yourself judging, and wishing for different — and we all do it — try a different approach: accept, and understand. it might lead to some interesting results.

　　“be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. when you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” - lao tzu

　　3

　　財富成功

　　A woman came out of her house and saw three old men with long hite beards sitting in her front yard.She did not recognize them.She said"I don't think I know you,but you must be hungry.Please come in and have something to eat."

　　一個婦人走出房間，看到3個留著花白鬍須的老人坐在前院內。她並不認識他們，於是對他們說：“我好像不認識你們，不過你們肯定是餓了吧，請進屋吃點東西吧。”

　　"Is the man of the house home?"they asked.

　　“你丈夫在家嗎?”他們問道。

　　"No,"she said."He's out."

　　“沒有，他出去了”，婦人回答說。

　　"Then we cannot come in",they replied,

　　“那我們不能進去”，老人們說。

　　In the evening when her husband came home,she told him what had happened."Go tell them I am home and invite in!"The woman went out and invited the men in.

　　晚上，丈夫回家了，妻子告訴丈夫發生的事情。“那趕緊去告訴他們我回來了，邀請他們進屋啊!”妻子出去了，邀請他們進來。

　　"We do not go into a house together ,"they replied.

　　“我們不能一起進屋，”老人們回答道。

　　"Why is that?"she wanted to know.

　　“為什麼呢?”妻子問道。

　　One of the old men explained:"His name is Wealth,"he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one,"He is Success,and I am Love."Then he added,"Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home."

　　其中一位老人指向他們中的一位老人說：“他的名字叫財富”，“另外一個叫成功，我叫做愛情”，之後他繼續補充道：“進屋和你丈夫商量一下，你想要邀請我們三位中的哪一位進屋呢?”

　　The woman went in and told her husband what was said.Her huaband was overjoyed."How nice!",he said."Since that is the case,let us invite Wealth.Let him come and fill our home with wealth!"

　　妻子進屋後將老人們的話告訴了丈夫，丈夫很高興，“太好了!”他說道，“如果是那樣的話，那我們邀請財富吧，讓他進來，讓我們家充滿財富!”

　　His wife disagreed,"My dear,why don't we invite Success?"Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house.She jumped in with her own suggestion:"Would it not be better to invite Love?Our home will then be filled with love!"

　　妻子不同意。“親愛的，為什麼不邀請成功呢?”當時媳婦正在房子另一角聽他們的對話，她也提出她的看法：“邀請愛情進來會不會更好呢?這樣我們家以後就會充滿愛了!”

　　"Let us heed our daughter-in-law's advice,"said the husband to his wife."Go out and invite Love to be our guest."

　　“我們就按照媳婦的意思吧”，丈夫對妻子講，“出去邀請愛情來我們家做客吧!”

　　The woman went out and asked the three old men,"Which one of you is Love?Please come in and be our guest."

　　妻子出去後問3位老人： “你們誰是愛情?請愛情到我們家做客吧。”

　　Love got up and started walking toward the house.The other two also got up and followed him.Surprised,the lady asked Wealth and Success:"I only invited Love,why are you coming in?"

　　愛情起身朝屋裡走去，其他兩位老人也起身跟在他身後。妻子覺得很奇怪，就問財富和成功“我只邀請了愛情，你們幹嗎也進去呢?”

　　The old men replied together:"If you had invited Wealth or Success,the other two of us would have stayed,but since you invited Love,wherever he goes,we go with him.Wherever there is Love,there is also Weath and Success!"

　　老人齊聲回答道：“如果你只邀請了財富或者成功，那麼另外兩位就不會進屋，但你邀請了愛，愛走到哪裡，我們就應該跟到哪裡。擁有愛就是擁有財富，擁有成功。”