好的英語美文欣賞學習

　　學生通過大量的課外閱讀美文能夠開闊自己的視野,增加文化積澱和思想內涵,同時陶冶情操,加強修養,豐富思想。下面是小編帶來的，歡迎閱讀!

　　篇一

　　You Have to Water the Plant

　　by Leland Stowe

　　For the things I believe in, I must give a reporter’s answer. Like everyone else, it’s out of my own experience. For twenty-four years I’ve been up to my neck in the world’s troubles; meeting people in dozens of foreign countries; watching other nations drift into war—and America too. It’s convinced me that one of the most important things in life, for every one of us, is understanding—trying to see the other fellow’s point of view. I’ve often thought: If I could really put myself in the other person’s shoes, see things the way he sees them, feel what he feels, how much more tolerant and fair I’d be.

　　I remember, back in the twenties, the bitter arguments between Europeans and Americans about reducing the war debts. I had to explain what the Europeans felt, and why. I learned then that there’s almost always some right, and some wrong, on both sides. We didn’t think enough about ours. When lack of understanding becomes pronounced, it leads to hatred and war. But it’s like that in our daily life, too. If I talk disparagingly about any racial group, I promote hatred—dissension in our society. I haven’t thought how I would feel if I belonged to that group.

　　In Berlin I saw Hitler’s thugs beating up helpless Jews. Then, back home, sometimes I heard people say: “Well, it’s their affair.” They forgot that freedom and fair play belong to all human beings—not to lucky Americans only. They forgot that people are people—of whatever creed, color, or nationality. I remember the poor Spanish and Greek peasants who shared their bread and cheese with me—all they had; the old Russian woman who made me take her bed, while she slept on the floor. So many simple people who couldn’t speak my language but spoke with their hearts.

　　One of the happiest things in my life is this: My best friends are like a roster of the United Nations—Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans, North Americans—just people, from all over the world. The best part is discovering how much we have in common; the constant reminder that friendship has no national barriers, the knowledge that all kinds of people really can understand each other.

　　We all have to live in this world, but we are all a mixture of good and bad. But I’ve found more of the good than the bad in most people—in every country. I think you only have to look— Understanding is a flower blossoming. But you have to water the plant. Then, when it blossoms, what a wonderful feeling! You feel that way when you make a new friend. I guess understanding really is charity and love. I know it gives a new meaning to our lives. When I die, I wish people might say: “He helped people to understand each other better.” Of course, I often fail. But just trying makes living seem worthwhile.

　　篇二

　　Growing in the Middle Ground

　　by Anne Phipps

　　I believe that my beliefs are changing. Nothing is positive. Perhaps I’m in a stage of metamorphosis, which will one day have me emerging complete, sure of everything. Perhaps, I shall spend my life searching.

　　Until this winter, I believed in outward things, in beauty as I found it in nature and art. Beauty past—swift and sure—from the outside to the inside, bringing intense emotion. I felt a formless faith when I rode through summerwoods, when I heard the counterpoint of breaking waves, when I held a flower in my hand.

　　There was the same inspiration from art, here and there in flashes; in seeing for the first time the delicacy of a green jade vase, or the rich beauty of a rug; in hearing a passage of music played almost perfectly; in watching Markov dance Giselle; most of all, in reading. Other people’s creations, their sensitivity to emotion, color, sound, their feeling for form, instructed me. The necessity for beauty, I found to be the highest good, the human soul’s greatest gift. But there were moments when I wasn’t sure. There was an emptiness inside, which beauty could not fill.

　　This winter, I came to college. The questions put to me changed. Lists of facts—and who dragged whom how many times around the walls of what—lost importance. Instead, I was asked eternal question: what is beauty, what is truth, what is God? I talked about faith with other students. I read St. Augustine and Tolstoy. I wondered if I hadn’t been worshipping around the edges. Nature and art were the edges, and inner faith was the center. I discovered—really discovered—that I had a soul.

　　Just sitting in the sun one day, I realized the shattering meaning of St. Augustine’s statement that, “The sun and the moon, all the wonders of nature, are not God’s first works but second to spiritual works.” I had, up till then, perceived spiritual beauty only through the outward. It had come into me. Now I am groping towards an inner, spiritual consciousness that will be able to go out from me. I am lost in the middle ground. I’m learning.

　　篇三

　　I Live Four Lives at a Time

　　by Alice Thompson

　　Everyone who has past his first few birthdays has some kind of guideline or things in which he believes. Its hard to put them in words that mean anything. I live a life of four dimensions—a wife, a mother, a worker, an individual in society. Diversified roles, yes; but they are well knit by two major forces: an attempt to discover, understand, and accept other human beings; and a belief in my responsibility toward others. The first began in my childhood when my father and I acted out Shakespeare. He refused to let me merely parrot Hamlet’s brooding soliloquy, Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, or Cardinal Woolsey’s self-analysis. He made a fascinating game of helping me understand the motivations behind the poetic words.

　　In college, a professor further sparked this passionate curiosity about the essence of others and, by his example, transmuted it into a deep concern, a sense of responsibility that sprang not from stern Calvinistic principles, but from an awareness of all I received—and must repay with gladness.

　　I believe this acceptance, this tenderness one has for others, is impossible without an acceptance of self. Just when or where I learned that the full quota of human weakness and strength was the common property of each of us, I don’t know. But somewhere in my late twenties, I grew able to admit my own drives—and, rid of the anguished necessity of re-costuming them, I was free to face them, and recognize that they were neither unique nor uncontrollable.

　　The rich and happy life I lead every day brings new witness to the validity of my own philosophy, for me. Certainly it works in marriage. Any real marriage is a constant understanding and acceptance, coupled with mutual responsibility for one another’s happiness. Each day I go out strengthened by the knowledge that I am loved and love.

　　In the mother-child relationship, those same two forces apply. Words are useless to describe my efforts to know my own children. But my great debt to them for their understanding of me is one I have often failed to repay. How can I overvalue a youngster with the thoughtfulness, the imagination to always phone when a late arrival might cause worry? To always know how to reassure. How can I repay the one who dashed into adulthood far too young but has carried all of its burden with a firm, joyous spirit?

　　My job itself is a reaffirmation of that by which I live. Very early in my working life, I was a small cog in a big firm. Emerging from a tiny job, I found a strange frightening world. Superficially, everyone was friendly. But beneath the surface were raging suspicion, distrust; the hand ever ready to ward off—or deliver—the knife in the back. For years I thought I was in a world of monstrous people. Then I began to know the company’s president. What he had been I have no way of knowing. But at seventy, he was suspicious, distrusting, sure that no one was telling him the truth. He had developed a technique of pitting all of us against each other. Able to see the distortion he caused, I youthfully declared that if I every ran a business, it would be on the reverse principle.

　　For the last two years, I have had that opportunity, and had the joy of watching people—widely different people, too—learn to understand each other, accept each other, feel mutually responsible.

　　My trials and errors have really synthesized into one great belief, which is that I am not alone in my desire to reach my fellow man. I believe the human race is inherently cooperative and concerned about its brother.